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A 



SHORT HISTORY 



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OF THC 



FRENCH PEOPLE. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



PAUL LACOMBE 



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BOSTOJ^ : 
HENRY A. YOUNG AND COMPANY. 

1878. 



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copyright: 
henry a. young and company, 



A SHORT HISTORY 

• OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 



I. 

WE all know that France was originally called 
Gaul, and its first inhabitants, our ances- 
tors, were called Gauls. I will explain how they 
came to be called French. 

The blood which flows in our veins is not pure 
Gallic blood ; for our ancestors were twice con- 
quered, — first, by the Romans ; afterwards, by the 
Germans. Both nations established themselves by 
force in our country, married here, and had children, 
so that the descendents of conquerors and conquered 
were united, forming one people ; hence we come 
from three sources, — the Gauls, Romans, and Ger- 
mans. 

Next to the Gauls, those to whom we owe most 
are the Romans, who settled here in even greater 
numbers than the Germans, and ruled for more than 
600 years ; the government, which had its seat in 



8 A SHORT HISTORY 

Rome, really or nominally governing this country. 
Further, the Romans were more civilized than the 
Gauls, and brought in education : they cut the first 
roads through the forests, which almost covered the 
land ; they taught the natives how to develop cop- 
per and silver mines, and to grow vines and wheat ; 
in fact, they Introduced agriculture. 

. Before the Roman conquest, the Gauls built their 
huts only of wood and earth ; the Romans first built 
houses and public buildings, of which we still have 
remains. The Romans, in a word, were our supe- 
riors, as we now are the superiors of the Arabs of 
Algeria : one of the best proofs of this is, that we 
gave up our language for theirs. 

Many people do not know what language the 
French is : it is not Gallic ; indeed, has little in 
common with that tongue ; it is Roman, or, rather, 
Latin, but changed, degenerate Latin. It was nat- 
ural that the Gallic peasant, trying to speak Latin, 
should thus change it. If, from any cause, we 
Frenchmen were forced to speak English, the edu- 
cated classes might speak it in its purity ; but the 
mass of the people would treat it after their own 
fashion, that is, maltreat it. So with Latin. 

While the Roman government maintained peace 
and order in our country, there were educated classes 
who alone did all the business, both in writing and 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 9 

speaking, and did it in Latin : the common people 
did not appear ; but there came a long period of 
troubles, wars, and disorders, when there was neither 
time nor wish for education To defend his life and 
earn his daily bread was the only thought of man. 
There were no upper classes : as regarded educa- 
tion, every one became of the people, and spoke 
barbarian Latin, and the French tongue was born. 
The people, all speaking bad Latin, could under- 
stand one another because they fell into the same 
errors ; for this is a well-authenticated fact For- 
eigners belonging to one country, — English for 
example, who speak bad French, — always make 
the same blunders. It was so with the Gauls ; 
and, when every one had become used to certain 
regular mistakes in their Latin, and invariably 
made them, as" it were, correctly, the French 
tongue had taken shape. This is soon understood, 
though it seems strange at first. 

The Romans had robbed us of our language ; 
the Germans took away our name of Gauls. These 
German invaders were divided into several tribes, 
of whom the Franks settled in the north of Gaul, 
the Burgundians in the east, and the Visigoths in 
the south. The kings of the Frankish tribes de- 
feated the kings of the two other tribes, and ruled 
alike over conquerors and conquered throughout 



lO A SHORT HISTORY 

Gaul, which thus became the kiugdom of the 
Franks ; and from that came later the words France 
and French. 

Having now traced back our source, our lan- 
guage, and our name, we will return to our origi- 
nal ancestors, the Gauls. 



II. 



The Gauls did not form one solid and compact 
nation, but were simply an agglomeration of clans. 
True, there was no clan living entirely isolated, 
and without alliance with others, no clan which 
did not belong to a confederation ; but the clan 
was always the important unit. It had an elective 
chief, chosen by all the freemen, who, with the prin- 
cipal heads of families, formed, when necessary, a 
sort of tribunal for civil and criminal cases. 
Above this jurisdiction was that of the Druids, the 
priests of that day, who received the final. appeal. 
There was no lack of judges among the Gauls, 
but a very decided lack of a well-organized public 
force to see that the judgments were carried out. 
They did not understand the meaning of The State. 
It is needless to say that there was neither police 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II 

nor any semblance of it, so that sentences were 
executed with more or less rigor in proportion to 
the force brought by private individuals to the aid 
of law. 

If each district of the present day were a 
little republic, where the rich citizens formed 
a court and gave decisions to be carried out by 
the people, would not the rich and powerful 
members of the community, supported by friends 
and relatives, defy the ' authority of the court ? 
Further, the republic being small and the frontier 
close at hand, any one with cause for alarm could 
flee the state, and escape punishment. Crime, sel- 
dom repressed, and encouraged by impunity, would 
become common. This was precisely the condition 
of the Gauls, with the added fact, that they were 
much more violent and barbarous than ourselves. 

Next to security, we must consider how the 
needs of ordinary life were met ; how people were 
fed, clothed, and lodged, — which leads us to the 
division of property. Man originally lived b}^ 
hunting and fishing : that is the first state of 
humanity, and a most precarious one. The man, 
whose dinner depends upon his gun and net, ex- 
periences strange fluctuations, — with more food 
than he can use 'to-day, and to morrow a fast. 
So, made ingenious by hunger, he conceives the 



12 A SHORT HISTORY 

idea of taming and domesticating certain animals, 
that he may have a dinner always at hand. He 
forms a herd, with which he slowly scours the 
country in search of pastures. This is pastoral 
life, the second state of humanity. 

Now for the rights of property in these two 
conditions. • In the first, he owned his arms and 
weapons for hunting and fishing, and to these were 
added, in the pastoral state, his herd and dogs ; 
but the idea of property had not extended to laud 
The words mine and thine were first applied to 
the soil when two clans met, and disputed the 
possession of a district. The result was, first, a 
fight, then a treaty. " You shall take the land, on 
that side the river; we, on this side." Here was 
the first idea of territorial property ; but it was as 
yet common and undivided ; for wdiat was the use 
of dividing it among the members of a clan, when 
it was much more convenient and safe for the 
herds to graze together ? They could thus be 
better defended against wild beasts; for a party 
of herdsmen could keep both themselves and flocks 
in far greater safety than one solitary shepherd 
alone with his little band. But the herds proved 
insufficient to save man from famine, and a new 
effort of industry was called for. 

They found, that, by burning the heath or woods. 



• OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I3 

and sowing certain herbs known as eatable, the 
good seed alone grew in quantities, choking the 
weeds ; and a new resource was discovered. 

Each man, having burned a little plot around 
his hut, sowed some seed there ; and this place 
became the property of the sower until after the 
harvest ; for he who sows, has clearly a right to 
reap. But, as soon as the harvest was over, the 
field fell back into the common lot. Besides, the 
second year this land was barren, and a new place 
had to be burned ; and so it went on until the 
neighborhood was exhausted, and another district 
had to be sought, or some way of fertilizing the 
soil discovered. Attention being turned in this 
direction, the result was the discovery of the first 
principles of agriculture, — clearing and dressing. 
Man now put labor "upon his land, and obtained 
not only immediate fruit, but future promise. 
Then how unjust that the clan should resume pos- 
scKsion of land which henceforth contained some- 
thing of his very self! This new idea arose, and, 
acting gradually upon the conscience, at length 
• destroyed, • as unfair, the communal right to culti- 
vated fields. 

For a long time, however, the clan was con- 
sidered the only actual possessor of land ; and its 
council apportioned to each head of a family the 



14 A SHORT HISTORY 

bit of territory, to which, according to the num- 
ber of his children, he had a right ; but, by slow 
degrees, the idea of private property became the 
ruling one. Originally, the estates had reverted 
annually to the community for redivision ; this 
time extended to three years, then to five, and 
ten, until a period came when the division was 
only among the members of the family, as each 
generation grew up ; and the family patrimony was 
henceforth set free from all communal claims. 

Property must necessarily pass through this in- 
termediate stage ; having been communal, it must 
belong to a family, before becoming personal. Of 
course, during this period, the family chieftain could 
not dispose of his land by will, since ho was not 
really the land-owner ; the right to bequeath can 
exist only with personal property. We must un- 
derstand, that the change we have mentioned af- 
fected only cultivated lands ; heaths and forests 
remained common property, for it did not occur 
to the people to apply to those the new principles, 
which had their foundation in agriculture. This 
state of things long continued among us; indeed, 
in some cases, down to the present day. 

When history first reveals to us something of 
these Gallic ancestors of ours, all these conditions 
of property existed side by side ; sometimes in 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I5 

neigboriDg tribes, sometimes in the same tribe, 
agriculture being still- very weak, and the pas- 
toral system predominating, and supplying most of 
the food. 

Now let us look at Gaul as she was then : al- 
most entirely wooded ; mountain and hillside cov- 
ered with a thick growth of oaks and beeches ; 
the highlands natural prairies; around villages and 
cities alone, a few little fields of barley and oats; 
along the river edge some plots of flax and hemp : 
villages and cities, which were only larger vil- 
lages, scattered afar through these immense for- 
ests : houses, or rather huts, all alike, made of 
wood, with earth in the interstices, and covered 
with boughs and reeds, and, a little later, with 
straw, that is, thatch ; within, no furniture but 
mats or pieces of cloth for beds, and some earthen 
or wooden jars ; possibly, but by no means surel}^ 
a table and benches. 

The dwellers in this hovel lived chiefly upon the 
flesh of their herds, especially the half savage swine, 
which burrowed in the adjacent woods, and had to 
be shot with arrows. They had already learned 
to salt this meat ; and, when even that gave out, 
as often happened, they filled its place with bar- 
ley or rye broth. They drank a concoction of 
rye ; bread was unknown 



l6 A SHORT HISTOKY 



III. 

Neither the master of the house, nor any of 
his male children or relatives worked in the fields : 
the labor of agriculture was beneath a freeman ; 
his time was spent in war and hunting, or, when 
at home, in sleeping or dreaming the day through 
upon a rug, as is still the custom with some 
American Indians The women cultivated the 
soil during the slumber of their lords and mas- 
ters, while the coloni and slaves watched the cat- 
tle, and performed the more menial tasks of bring- 
ing wood and water. 

Hardly have we entered upon history, and al- 
ready'- we find slaves. It is easy to explain how 
they have fallen into this condition ; war created 
this class ; the slave was a man who had been 
wounded or disarmed in battle, and vp'hom his con- 
queror might have killed, after the barbarous fash- 
ion of the day, but whom he preferred to spare 
for his own purposes. It is noteworthy, that, to 
the scourge of war, humanity owes the wound of 
slavery. Slaves became numerous, for war was 
frequent. Tribes would fight for a pasture, a 
wood, a spring, a herd of swine, sometimes for 



QF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I7 

the simple love of fightinp:, since military courage 
was ever held in high repute. But besides slaves 
we find coloni whose condition when Caesar en- 
tered Gaul did not greatly differ from that of slaves ; 
and it is not easy to explain the existence of 
this numerous class. 

They owned no land, but worked for others in re- 
turn for part of the products, and were in fact a sort 
of farmer, but not free like farmers of the present 
day. According to Csesar, they were bound to an 
estate or master, and not allowed to leave them ; 
and the master had probably a right to inflict upon 
them corporal punishment, as upon his slaves. 

The question is how it happened, that, in a so- 
ciety where was so little landed property, where 
this property had until very lately been divided 
periodically among families, and where money was 
so scarce, — how it happened, we say, that men 
were forced to toil for others, upon the harshest 
terms, and that already the inequalities of rank 
were so striking. We may conjecture many causes 
which might have produced this result, but it can 
be only conjecture ; at the same time, it may be 
well to mention some of them. 

At a certain moment, in certain tribes, the dis- 
tribution of land ceased, and the size of estates be- 
coming thus unchangeable, it necessarily resulted 

2 



l8 A SHORT HISTORY 

that families, in which there were many children be- 
came much poorer than those in which there were 
very few children : here is one cause. 

At this time, poverty was the sure forerunner of 
servitude ; for there was little money, and not 
enough produce to support all, and a poor man could 
borrow neither gold nor provisions, except upon the 
most burdensome terms. His only pledge was his 
liberty, his person, and he thus became the slave oi 
serf of his creditor. Caesar says positively, that 
many slaves and coloni were insolvent debtors ; and 
this has been a common custom among nations in 
the early days of society. The Roman people, for 
instance, were long subject to the patricians 
through the bond of loans. It is astonishing 
that the borrowers, being far more numerous than 
the lenders, had the honesty, or cowardice, to 
fulfil the severe conditions to which they had 
agreed : there was no public force to make them 
keep the terms of their contract, and the only 
reason why the poor Gauls did not rebel against 
the rich, as so often happened in Rome, was that 
the latter were brave and fierce as well as rich ; 
for, to gain or keep wealth in those days, this 
character was necessary. These men were feared, 
and, besides, thanks to their money, were able to 
employ soldiers and assassins to increase the num- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I9 

ber of their clients, and hold them under control. 
I think we are too ready to believe that, among 
barbarous nations, the Gauls especially, every 
man was a bravo, a ferocious warrior, whereas it 
was evidently then, as it is now, as it is always, 
that some men were timid and peaceful, fearing 
war and quarrels. They devoted themselves to 
agriculture and trade, and, to gain protectors, made 
themselves coloni or slaves ; they constituted the 
people : the others, violent, turbulent, and ener- 
getic, gradually formed an upper class, which 
scorned every thing but war. These were the 
nobles. The existence of this class is not an hy- 
pothesis ; for, in the time of Caesar, there were no- 
bles, princes, and even kings, in certain Gallic 
tribes. The princes, doubtless, owed their eleva- 
tion to that eager and grasping disposition which, 
at that epoch, was the chief cause of all ad- 
vancement Perhaps war created some of these 
kings ; for, as soon as it was declared, a chief 
must be chosen, and, though elected for only one 
expedition, he might abuse the power gained, it 
may be, through the fame of a victory, to make 
his honors permanent. Other principalities had a 
different source. The clan, as we have said, was 
merely a family, greatly multiplied by time ; and, 
in many tribes, that branch, descending most di- 



20 A SHORT HISTORY 

rectly from the original ancestors, occupied a priv- 
ileged place, and enjoyed a kind of acknowledged 
supreniacy. This supremacy, in the hands of a 
bold and clever warrior, would grow into actual" 
control over men and their domains. We know 
the qualities that are honored among us of the 
present, that distinguish a man and raise him 
above his fellows, — wealth, courage, blood, rank, 
eloquence, address, magnificence ; even so were 
they honored in those days, and destroyed equality, 
destroying it indeed far more utterly than with us, 
since it is the nature of coarse, untutored men to 
push every advantage to excess. It seems highly 
probable, and, if proved, would explain both the 
overwhelming power of the warriors, and the ex- 
treme misery of the lower classes, that the war- 
riors claimed the untitled lands, those pastures, 
fields, and forests, which formed much the larger 
part of the territory of each tribe. They gov- 
erned the tribe, and pretended to act for it, and, 
no doubt, under pretext of regulating the public 
good, did they take possession. So the progress 
of agriculture was arrested, the further cultivation 
of these usurped lands being impossible, since the 
nobles raised immense droves of cattle, and kept 
ciowds of herdsmen, whilst the ever multiplying 
plebeian families could win no support from their 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 21 

limited fields which never increased beyond the 
original size. Vain were their entreaties for land ; 
they were reduced to accepting their daily bread 
from the usurping lords, who sold it to them at 
the price of their liberty. 



IV 



When Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar, 
Rome, as we know, was the capital of a large 
aristocratic republic ; this form of government 
lasted but a short time, for Julius Caesar employed 
the vanquished to enslave the victors, and made 
himself emperor in fact, though he never bore the 
title ; his nephew and adopted son, Augustus, had 
both place and name. 

Gaul, henceforth a province of the Roman Em- 
pire, was ruled by an absolute prince. The fatal 
principles, inherent in this kind of government, 
were not immediately felt in Gaul ; on the con- 
trary, the country seemed to gain by it ; there 
was more rule, order, and security for all classes. 

An absolute prince docs not like his subjects to 
fight among themselves, since, in so doing, they 
destroy property, upon which he meant to levy a 



22 A SHORT HISTORY 

tax, Gaul rested from those continual wars of 
tribes against tribes, and confederations against 
confederations. Roman peace descended upon the 
people, and gave the Romans an opportunity to 
accomplish their duties as teachers. The Gauls, 
under this training, learned many arts previously 
unknown to them, and in some surpassed their 
masters. For instance, they wrought metals bet- 
ter in Gaul than in any other Roman province ; 
they made brass of the first quality, and invented 
the art of tinning copper, of gilding and silver- 
ing iron. Roads were cut, cities built, temples, 
theatres, and schools erected. They had luxury, 
education, eloquence, arts, — in a word, brilliant 
civilization. 

The few Roman structures remaining on our soil 
are tokens of an architecture at once solid, fin- 
ished, and chaste ; and the specimens, which 
have come down of the industry of that day, 
are stamped with the seal of elegant simplicity. 
Unfortunately, this civilization brought happiness 
onl}^ to the few ; the masses, in both town and 
country, were equally wretched. 

The primary cause of this universal misery was 
the unjust division of property, the Roman con- 
quest bringing no change in this respect. The 
Gallic princes and nobles were left in possession 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 23 

of their dignities and weulth, and deprived only 
of the government of the tribes, that being hence- 
forth ill. the hands of Roman functionaries. 

Italy, and other countries already Roman, had 
experienced the same vicissitudes that we have 
seen in Gaul, — a small number of aristocratic 
families having usurped the greater part of the 
land, which they shared only with a few financiers 
who had made fortunes by fraud in the collection 
of public taxes. It was a fixed system with these 
large land-owners to oppose the cultivation of ce- 
rials, except in some very fertile spots like Sicily, 
and let their immense domains lie fallow. There 
were many advantages in this. It was much less 
trouble to oversee herdsmen, and require from 
them an account of their cattle, than to direct the 
very complicated details of agriculture. Then, 
agriculture demanded more hands, co/ont must be 
employed, and the products of the soil shared with 
theni, whereas cattle could be raised with the aid 
of a few slaves who needed little food and had 
no part in the profits. This system and these im- 
mense estates — lalifundia, as they were called, — 
were the cause of the many deaths from starvation 
in the cities. Theie was no industry ; the ^qv7 in- 
dispensible trades were practised by slaves, com- 
missioned by their masters Elsewhere, all well- 



24 A SHORT HISTORY 

to-do mansions employed their own slaves to pro- 
vide whatever was needed, — shoes, stockings, 
clothing, &c. The poorer citizens, with no means 
of support save agriculture, incessantly Legged for 
land, which the nobles refused to yield, preferring 
to play the part of almoners to impovished neigh- 
bors, and feed them from day to day, or lend them 
money, since thus they were kept under control. 
This condition of Eoraan society found a corre- 
spondence in Gallic society ; and there was no 
difficulty in communicating this system of latifun- 
dia- to soil prepared to receive it. 

The two centuries following the conquest must 
have been hard indeed to the agricultural classes, 
crowded together by this system upon a portion 
of land too small to support them. We do not 
know all their sufferings, but we may imagine 
them. 

In the third century of the Christian era, a rev- 
olution took place, a revolution so obscure that 
we rather divine than perceive it. At that mo- 
ment, it seems that the system of latifandia was 
abandoned, to be followed by the cultivation of 
small estates. This change may have been caused 
by a dearth of slaves. So long as Rome made con- 
quests, there had been no lack of them It is 
true, that, crushed by toil, they were shortlived, 



OF THE FRENCp PEOPLE. 25 

and left few children to inheri-t their burdens ; but 
another conquest would supply the deficiency. 
When these conquests ceased, and the Koman 
Empire was, on the contrary, harassed by bar- 
barians, the position was reversed ; the barbarians 
recruited their slaves from among the conquered, 
and Roman land-owners were forced to abandon 
the system of slave labor, and have recourse to 
one more or less free. Then serfdom appeared, — 
or, to speak .more exactly, for it already existed, 
— serfdom made an immense advance. 

They called serfs,— or, rather, coloni, — at that 
time, men who tilled the estate of a land-owner 
at a fixed rent, which sometimes amounted to 
quarter or half the products. The coloni were, as 
we see, a sort of farmers, but perpetual farmers, 
since the master could not discharge them, nor 
could they quit the- domain. They were considered 
free ; but, we must understand, free as regarded 
the master, in the sense that they paid him only 
a fixed rent ; beyond this, they were the slaves 
of the estate to which they were attached, — serfs 
of the glebe, as they were called later, — and, 
should they run away, their masters could have 
them seized. Some historians think this servitude 
was decreed by the emperors to bind husbandmen 
to the soil ; but it is most unlikely. No govern- 



26 . A SHORT HISTORY 

ment in the world has ever been so absolute as to 
decree a change in the radical condition of an 
immense people ; and, in the third century, serfs 
composed the majority of the rural populace. Ser- 
vitude of the glebe was, no doubt, originally one 
•of the terms of the contract made between the 
rich land-owner and the poor suppliant for land. 
This seems almost certain, when we remember that' 
the latter was probably a client or debtor, (obcera- 
tus) of the former, which, under Roman customs, 
was almost equivalent to being his slave ; for we 
know, that, in Rome, the creditor had a right to 
seize the debtor, and either imprison him or send 
him to some estate to work off his debt. These 
debtors probably furnished the first type of serfs. 
If land-owners later granted domains to men not 
their debtors, at a period, too, when the more rig- 
orous laws concerning debt had been abolished, it 
was done upon certain, established conditions. 
The old serfs, so to speak, had made the contract 
for the new ones, and sealed their fate. . 

It is also probable that many slaves were raised 
to the rank of coloni, their masters finding real 
advantage in thus inciting them to greater zeal 
in labor, since they, too, were become almost 
farmers. Furthermore, some emperors transplanted 
whole tribes of vanquished barbarians into imperial 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 27 

territory, and put them upon vast, uncultivated 
districts, where armed troops kept guard over 
them. The masters of the world were already dis- 
turbed at the depopulation of the Empire, and be- 
gan to regard cultivation of the soil as the first 
and most pressing interest of the State. It was 
from the conquered, that they first drew material 
for a new class of slaves. This is more compre- 
hensible than that the 'system should have begun 
with freemen ; but, gradually, it extended to 
the latter ; and the time came, when whoever 
put spade to earth became serf of the soil in 
the name of public interest. The same principles 
of despotism reached beyond the husbandmen to 
all classes of subjects, as we shall presently see. 
The destruction of latifandia, and establishment 
of serfdom, would have had results of great mo- 
ment, had the change been made earlier ; but it 
came at a time when administrative regularity, 
order, and security had much diminished. Very 
many barbarians had been forced upon Gaul, as 
coloni, and became an active element of disorder. 
The abrupt changes of emperors, on account of 
military sedition, or conspiracies, were not events 
calculated to restore peace. The rich and power- 
ful oppressed the poor and weak more than ever; 
taxes were excessive, and most uneqaally distribu- 
ted. • . . 



28 A SHORT HISTORY 

Uuder the Rom an s, there was a great variety of 
taxes : we will not enumerate them ; suffice it to 
say, that the chief burden fell upon the landed 
property. Landowners alone paid taxes to the 
government, which required nothing from coloni ; 
but no one can doubt that the landowners increased 
the rents in proportion to the demands made upon 
them by the treasury, in the same way that a land- 
lord does now. 

One example will show how excessive this tax 
was. Each city had a sort of municipal council, 
called the curia, and whoever owned twenty-five 
acres of land was forced to become a member. 
Under a moderate government, this would have 
been a coveted post ; under the Roman govern- 
ment, it was shunned. The curials administered the 
affairs of their city, and collected the taxes. 
When they failed to obtain the full sum demanded 
by the State, they were required to supply the de- 
ficit ; so the curials endured all the care and 
burden of property, to find themselves, at the 
end of the year, stripped of their income. They 
could barely exist, and, in any case, lived in the 
expectation of being ruined sooner or later. Many 
preferred to quit, once for all, their honors and 
wealth, and disappear to start afresh, — poor 
wretches, — unknown, in another province ; but the 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 29 

State pursued them, and dragged them back, or, 
failing in this, confiscated tlieir goods. The Ro- 
man government gave the rich a disgust for 
wealth ; nothing stronger can be said against it. 
This readily suggests the condition of peasants, 
coloni, and laborers. 

This class had no direct intercourse with the im- 
perial treasury; but, as I said before, landowners, 
oppressed by government, in turn oppressed the 
coloni. The brightest prospect, often, to the latter, 
was,, that by constant labor, they might avoid 
starvation ; by no possibility, could they become 
rich, and, consequently, they worked so as to ob- 
tain simply enough for subsistence, as always 
happens, when the profits of toil are not for -the 
toiler. As the Roman government gave a disgust 
for wealth, so it also discouraged labor. 

The more energetic coloni did better ; they took 
flight, and settled in the extensive forests of Gaul, 
where they returned to primitive life, and supported 
themselves upon wild fruits, and the trophies of 
hunting. These deserters, who were called Bag- 
audes, occasionally robbed the members of the so- 
ciety, from which they had broken, and were 
sometimes strong enough to put cities to the sack. 
Bagaudie lasted throughout the Empire. 

The ranks of working-men being thus daily 



30 A SHORT HISTORY 

thinned by desertion, the taxes weighed so much 
the more heavily upon those who remained. Pov- 
erty, as ever, led to a crowd of diseases ; people 
died young, rarely married, had as few children 
as possible, since they must be born to a life of 
suffering. Besides, after a family exceeded a cer- 
tain number, the children died for want of carfe. 
The population steadily diminished ; each genera- 
tion was more feeble, enervated, and languid, than. 
the preceding. When men can hope to gain from 
life nothing but bare existence in return for hard 
labor, they live like dying men. Such was the 
case now, and several times afterwards under the 
early kings of France. 



Y. 



At the end of the Empire, slaves having de- 
creased in number, the cities held a larger pro- 
portion of free artisans, though they were not 
very numerous. 

Generally, those belonging to one trade formed 
a corporation. No workman could exist by him- 
self; competition would have been ruinous. The 
system of freedom in labor was too powerful for. 
the poor, feeble industry of that period. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 3 1 

These trade-unions were authorized by govern- 
ment, and could' not bo formed without its per- 
mission. Artisans suffered from the same difficul- 
ties as husbandmen, so there existed' among them 
great uneasiness, and a constant tendency to leave 
their trade, and seek elsewhere different and hap- 
pier fortunes. 

This uneasiness, indeed, was universal ; all 
classes and iiidividuals were infected with it. It 
was like the longing of the sick man to leave the 
bed upon which he feels himself dying. But 
government allowed ilo change ; it needed soldiers 
and revenues more than ever ; it needed its levies 
of money and men to be made with ease and dis- 
patch. It did not possess an administration either 
as large or as well-regulated as those of modern 
days. Besides, the frugal conditions of the age, 
the lack of coined money, the small number of 
roads, the prevalence of forests, and the many 
deserts, singularly fettered ' the action of officials. 
Government sought a remedy in extreme measures, 
and applied to all classes the laws which ruled 
coloni. It bound artisans to their trade, curials to 
their chair, soldiers to their legions, even senators 
to their dignities. The son must succeed to the 
office of his father.- The world was made im- 
movable, by decree. • To this condition had the Em- 
pire fallen I 



32 A SHORT HISTORY 



VI. 

France, as we know, is at the western corner 
of Europe ; while Spain, Italy, and Greece occu- 
py the southern part. At the period we have 
reached, Italy, Spain, • Greece, and France, all 
provinces of. the Roman Empire, were civilized ; 
but what are now Germany, Denmark, Sweden, 
and Russia, the whole vast centre of Europe, were 
barbarian. 

We have already alluded to the Germans, those 
barbarians who inhabited Germany, and were the 
nearest neighbors of the Gallo -Romans. These 
people, divided, as Gaul had been, into tribes and 
confederations, and in precisely the condition of 
the early Gauls, made constant wars among them- 
selves, even as the Gauls had done before the 
conquest, but were only too ready to turn their 
mania for fighting against their neighbors. 

All nations, whose support depends upon cattle, 
which was the case with the Germans, as it had 
been with the Gauls, feel sometimes the need of 
emigrating, in a body, from their own land to an- 
other, which seems to them more promising. This, 
with pastoral tribes, is both a natural taste, and a 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 33 

measure of economy. Poverty forced these migra- 
tions upon the Germans. When a tribe became 
too large, the younger people had to form com- 
panies under some chief, and depart far from the 
settlement to free the tribe from a superfluity of 
mouths, which would soon have reduced it to 
starvation. 

The countries to which the Germans would nat^ 
urally give the preference in these emigrations were 
the provinces of the Roman Empire ; first, because 
their climate was warmer and pleasanter ; then, 
because they contained well-cultivated es.tates, or- 
chards, and vineyards : wine was there," always a 
strong temptation to savages ; gold, silver, valu- 
able furniture, fine arms, beautiful stuffs. The 
barbarians knew this well, and no doubt exagger- 
ated the splendors of the Roman cities. The Em- 
pire offered to the uncivilized world a booty al- 
ways exposed to view ; and these provinces, as 
we have said, were the most tempting, Gaul be- 
ing particularly so to . the Germans, since it was 
separated from them only by the Rhine. But the 
Romans hardly wished their visitation, and re^ 
pulsed the plunderers with all possible energy as 
soon as they appeared upon the frontier. 

The situation was not the less dangerous for 
the Roman provinces. Hosts of barbarians were 



34 A SHORT HISTORY 

always at their gates, ready to force an 'entrance 
at the first relaxation of watchfulness. The Ro- 
mans, for their better defence, resolved to make 
the first attack, and went in search of the barba- 
rians to tame them by force, thinking that these 
fickle, restless tribes, once civilized, would settle 
down, and the danger of immigration be sup- 
pressed. The Koman legions succeeded in con- 
quering these people. Several times they trav- 
ersed Germany without meeting the least resist- 
ance ; but,' after a period of apparent annihilation, 
the Germans always recuperated, and, surprising 
the Roman troops, inflicted upon them a bloody 
defeat. The attempt to civilize Germany was a 
failure, and the Roman government tried a new 
expedient. It established on this side the Rhine, 
upon the frontiers menaced with invasion, a cer- 
tain number of these very barbarians, and gave 
them lands, foreseeing, that, once fairly settled 
upon their own estates, they would feel it for 
their interest to repel invasions, which must first 
pass by them. It was a wise policy. At the 
same time, an army of at least a hundred thou- 
sand men was, for years, kept in the rear of this 
rampart of colonized barbarians ; the Romans were 
'not blind to their danger. 

This danger was still greater than they sus- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 35 

pected ; for, far behind Germany, even ' to the 
midst of Asia, were countless savage tribes in 
perpetual motion. In the fifth century, by a se- 
ries of events little known to us, an immense and 
warlike Asiatic tribe, the tribe of Huns, was pre- 
cipitated upon Europe, and drove before it the 
first German nations it met : these drove forward 
others, — it was one enormous pressing onward, 
and came just at the time when the Empire 
was everywhere weakening, — when discipline, 
valor, and military skill were ' at their lowest ebb. 
The barriers of the Empire cracked and broke on 
all sides. Sixty thousand' Burgundians took pos- 
session of the Jura, of the valley of the Saone, 
and of the Durance (A. D. 406 to 411), and of all 
the country -around Lyons; two or three hundred • 
thousand Visigoths seized the south, with Toulouse 
for their capital and royal residence (A. D. 412 
to 450). After them came other bands belonging 
to divers peoples, less numerous but more savage ; 
they poured- into Gaul like a torrent. The Franks 
entered at the north, and spread to Soissons, then 
to- Paris (A. D. 481 to 500). The Burgundians 
and Visigoths, already converted to Christianity 
and slightly unbarbarized , took, as a rule, only 
two-thirds of the land and one-third of the slaves. 
The Franks seized whatever land they chose, after 



36 A SHORT HISTORY 

indiscriminate pillage. We can imagine what this 
invasion must have been under the guidance of 
warriors, fierce, cruel, and unbridled in rapacity. 
When the Franks were titular masters of the north, 
the Visigoths of the south, and the Burgundians 
of the east, the wronged and plundered Gauls 
probably ' hoped for quiet at least ; if so, they 
were deceived. The Franks were converted to 
Catholicism ; and, henceforth sure of the support 
of the clergy throughout France, they resolved to 
wrest the whole of Gaul from the other barba- 
rians. 

We must understand the interest this conquest 
had for the Frankish soldiers and their leader, 
Clovis. In the first place, both chief and soldiers 
wished to conquer for the sake of pillage ; — thus 
far their purposes were the same ; — but the 
chieftain had, besides, motives of more refined 
policy. lie hoped to gain property which had 
belonged to the imperial treasures ; for the bar- 
barian kings were reported to have succeeded to 
imperial power. Here would be new lands to 
bestow. His soldiers, being already provided in 
this respect, he could distribute these new estates 
among new soldiers summoned from beyond the 
Ehine ; and he would thus win the allegiance of 
a larger number of vassals or leudes, which would 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 37 

at once increase his power and the splendor of 
his command. Thus far reached the ambition of 
the barbarian king ; but we need not endow him 
with political projects, nor with a taste for power 
simply as power. 

Let me say a few words on the kind of empire 
these kings held over their soldiers : they were 
not real kings, they were only leaders, whom the 
soldiers obeyed in war from an instinct of disci- 
pline ; but in peace they received little homage. 
Whilst in German j'-, the warriors had been at lib- 
erty to choose, from among the chiefs or kings of 
different tribes, the one under whose command 
they would go in SLcarch of war or adventures. 
They were not required to serve the king of their 
own tribe ; they could desert him, if he were lack- 
ing in courage or boldness, to take service under 
a more acceptable leader. What they asked was 
a chief who would win for them victory, and booty, 
the fruit of victory. This spirit of independence, 
and these customs were long retained in Gaul. 

When the Franks entered Gaul, they were di- 
vided into two grand confederations, and into a 
certain number of tribes ; there were several kings, 
though how many is not exactly known. Among 
these, the soldiers could make choice of a leader. 
The chiefs, on their side, strove to keep each his own 



38 A SHORT HISTORY 

soldiers, and to beguile others from neighboring 
kings. The way to win them, as we have said, 
was to make war, and gain booty and land for 
his soldiers, and also for himself, to distribute 
afterwards. This latter detail is especially to be 
noted, for it led to consequences of cardinal im- 
portance. 

Clovis, of whom I have just spoken and who 
was really the first king of France, excelled in 
collecting about him warriors from all the Frank- 
ish tribes. He made war upon the Visigoths and 
Burgundians to gratify his little army, and to in- 
crease it by an invitation to soldiers from beyond 
the Rhine to seek their fortunes under him. He 
conquered the Burgundians and destroyed the king- 
dom of the Visigoths, by these means adding to 
his power until he quite effaced the lesser Frank- 
ish kings, and, after, reducing them to a species 
of solitude, by the appropriation of their soldiers, 
he could with impunity have them assassinated or 
even treacherously slay them with his own hand. 
Thus he remained sole chief of Franks and Visi-. 
goths. Had he left only one heir, Gaul might 
have been spared the wars which desolated her 
provinces ; but he had several sons, among whom 
the country was divided; and once more arose a 
contest for the largest number of soldiers, to be 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 39 

won by him who should be most active in wars, 
— wars against Burgundy, .which at last destroyed 
that kingdom, — wars against Aquitaine, — against 
Gascony, — against Brittany, which was almost 
independent, though under the nominal sovereignty 
of the Franks, — finally, wars among themselves. 
All these wars had, indeed, no motive but those 
we have seen — among the common soldiers, a 
wish for plunder and land ; among the chiefs, 
also a wish for plunder and lands, with the addi- 
tion of a certain political idea, which .consisted 
in keeping for themselves only a part of their 
gains, and distributing the rest to their soldiers. As 
the reader must see, I dwell , upon this last as a 
most important point. 



VII. . 

Nothing is more important to a nation, nor 
marks with greater precision the degree of civili- 
zation it has reached, than its forms of justice. 
For this cause alone, it would be interesting to 
know how justice was executed among the Ger- 
man barbarians ; but, besides this reason, their 
judiciary organization, or, rather, to speak more 



40 A SHORT HISTORY 

exactly, the absence of any real organization has 
been the cause of very serious consequences to 
their descendants. 

.At the beginning of all society, when public 
power does not exist to punish crime, each man 
has to protect and avenge himself, that fear may 
prevent further attacks. In this state, the isolated 
man is very weak, and people feel the need of 
binding themselves together in families. When 
one member of a family is insulted, all unite to 
avenge him ; on the other side, the family of the 
aggressor take part with him ; and the result is 
war between two houses. • Of course, this war dis- 
turbs the public peace, and threatens the security 
of the neighbors. The idea naturally suggests it- 
self that this warfare might be ended by interpos- 
ing and conciliating the enemies. This is not an 
hypothesis ; it is a necessary cause -and result. Be- 
sides, it is well known, that, for some time before 
their advent into Gaul, it was a common habit 
among the Germans to cite the two parties before 
a tribunal composed of all the family chieftains 
belonging to the tribe. There, the murderer de- 
nied or confessed his guilt. If he denied, the 
court tried to convict him : witnesses were rarely 
employed for this, a well-organized public power 
being needed to bring them before the tribunal, 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 4I 

confront them with the prisoner, and obtain proof 
of their honesty. More frequently recourse was 
had to various ordeals to which the defendant was 
subjected. He must plunge his arm into boiling 
water, and lift something from it without burning 
himself (this was ordeal by hot water) ; or he 
must walk over a pan of coals (this was ordeal 
by fire) ; or, after being thrown into water with 
his arms tied, he must sink to the bottom (this 
was not so difficult, — they thought water would 
reject the guilty with horror, — this was ordeal 
by water) ; or he must fight his adversary, and 
of cotirse could not fail to conquer, if he were in- 
nocent (this ordeal was called later the judicial 
duel) ; or yet again, and this most commonly hap- 
pened, his guilt or innocence was put to the oath 
of himself and his family. The defendant some- 
times brought as many as a hundred people to 
swear in his behalf. All this was hardly addressed 
to the judges. The object was to convince the 
plaintiff, and persuade him to forego vengeance. 
The judges simply presided over the ceremonies. 

Should the plaintiff, in spite of witnesses or de- 
nials, trials or oaths, remain sure of the guilt of 
the defendant, he retained a right to avenge him- 
self, and the judges had served in vain. If, on 
the- contrary, the defendant was convicted or made 



42 A SHORT HISTORY 

confession, the duty of the judges became more 
serious, — they had to decide upon the reparation 
to be made. They might, for instance, say, ''-The 
defendant has killed your slave of such age and 
sex ; he must make amends by paying^ so much/' 
Even then the plaintiff might refuse the reparation, 
and prefer war ; or the defendant might say, " I 
will not pay ; let us fight/' Justice, in that "early 
stage, was only an attempt at conciliation. The 
one thing in its power was 'to estimate the price 
to be paid for damages. This compensation was 
called wergheld. There was no other penalty, — 
no corporal punishment, — no imprisonment, at 
least among the Franks ; the Burgundians and 
Visigoths did have certain corporal penalties.. 
This was the organization which the barbarians- 
brought into Gaul. 

They did not, however, impose their judiciary 
customs upon the vanquished. The Gallo-Romans 
continued to be ruled by their own laws and 
judged according to the forms of Roman justice. 
Each barbarian tribe also kept its own law : there 
was the law of the Visigoths, the law. of the 
Franks, and the law' of the Burgundians. Law 
was personal, and this lasted till the eighth cen- 
tury. Then came a great change, which took for 
its accomplishment an uncertain length of time, 
somewhere between fifty and a hundred years. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 43 

When this was achiev,ed, France appeared di- 
vided into a certain number of provinces, various 
in extent, each having its own laws and customs, 
which rtiled both inhabitants and strangers, even 
the most transient, without distinction of nation- 
ality. Law had become territorial. This change, 
so complete' and, at first glance, so surprising, can 
be readily explained. When the several barbarian 
tribes settled in Gaul, they differed somewhat from 
one another, and very decidedly from the Romans, 
in appearance and language. These distinctions 
were in time effaced. Marrying Gallo-Roman 
women, their children did not bear the features 
of their race ; their manners and customs became * 
absorbed in those of the Gallo-Romans ; even their 
own language was forgotten for that of the van- 
quished. At the end of the tenth century^ the 
law of the Visigoths could not be applied to one, 
that of the Franks to another ; for neither Frank, 
Visigoth, nor Burgundian was distinguishable. So 
this great change is explained most simply ; it 
was inevitable. 

Another equally important change was attempted, 

but unfortunately failed. The kings, advised by 

^ the clergy, and converted to higher ideas of jus-* 

tice, tried to impose upon the convicted criminal 

the obligation to pay the wergheld, and, upon the 



44 A SHORT HISTORY 

opposite side, the obligation to accept it. Had 
the kings been obeyed, the multitude of private 
wars would have ceased, and a grand calm would 
have fallen upon this turbulent society ; but the 
kings were not obeyed. Even Charlemagne could 
with difficulty obtain, for. a few years, a partial 
compliance with his orders. Under his succes- 
sors, private warfare became more frequent than 
ever. We shall see its effects presently. 



VIII. 



It is now time to explain the results which the 
kings anticipated from that distribution of lands 
of which I have spoken. 

First, we must carefully discriminate between, 
the lands which the kings distributed and those 
which the soldiers received immediately after the 
victory, and which, in the language of that time, 
were called sortes (lots) or al-ods. .These sortes were 
shares acquired by lot, as, after the pillage, a mass 
was made of all movable booty, which was di- 

• 

vided into as many portions as there were soldiers, 
or, perhaps, only captains ; and these portions 
were drawn by lot ; in the same way, an estimate 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 45 

was made of the domains which, it was thought, 
could be wrested from the natives, and these also 
drawn by lot. The king, so far as regarded mov- 
able booty, had a share- scarcely larger than that 
of the other captains ; but, in the domain, his por- 
tion, already marked out, comprised the lands pre- 
viously owned by the Roman fisc. Now, the Ro- 
man fisc had everywhere a goodly number of 
lands, so the territorial share of the king was 
considerable. It is noteworthy, that the captain 
or soldier, in accepting his allotted booty and do- 
main, felt no obligation towards his chief: to his 
mind, they were the trophies of war, — advan- 
tages due purely to his own courage, — -and upon 
which the chief could found no claim of sover- 
eignty. 

As regarded the lands which the king detached 
from his own domains, and distributed, that was 
another matter ; in the language of the Gallo- 
Romans, they were called benefices. Naturally, the 
kings did not give these without conditions ; they 
exacted from soldiers thus honored, promises, 
general oaths. of fidelity and obedience, and often 
more precise obligations; for example, that bene- 
ficiaries should go to court, at specified times, to 
help in the decision of law-cases and in other busi- 
ness affairs, — that they should respond to a call 



46 A SHORT HISTGEY 

to war, and that they should pay certain rentals. 
These obligations would seem the natural duties 
of subjects without any need that the king should 
bestow gifts in return ; but the situation cannot 
bo judged by modern customs. It must be re- 
membered that the Germans did not recognize 
kings in reality, and understood, as a fact in pol- 
itics, only the radical independence of each. indi- 
vidual. 

These conditional grants 'made by the kings 
were imitated by captains, who had received 
large estates, and, in their turn, wished vassals 
and soldiers : they gave benefices upon similar 
conditions. We must remember, that, under the 
Frankish system, each man held the right to make 
war upon private enemies, — to avenge injuries 
and indemnify himself, with his own hand, * for 
wrong done him, so that every rich and powerful 
baron needed soldiers under his control. 

Now for the results of this system. The Frank- 
ish kings had laid Gaul waste by cruel wars, to 
obtain lands fl^om which to form benefices. These 
benefices became a new and permanent source of 
wars, — wars between kings and their beneficia- 
ries,. — between the lesser chiefs- and their bene- 
ficiaries. 

The benefices were usually granted only for 



• OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 47 

life ; at the time of the donation, it was nnder- 
stood that they could be recalled at the death of 
the beneficiary, this being generally a positive 
clause in the agreement. But probity and respect 
for promises were not the ruling virtues of these 
barbarians. The beneficiaries wished to evade the 
•obligation, and often attempted to keep both the 
property and their old German independence. On 
the other hand, kings and patrons tried to des- 
poil' the beneficiaries at will, by giving, reclaim- 
ing, and giving to others, according to their in- 
terest or momentary caprice. 

In the midst of these wars among unjust and 
violent men, whom war made still more hard, vio- 
lence was the one only resource. The Frankish 
warrior was never sure that he might not be 
treated as a Gallo-Roman or a slave, by his 
former comrades, now leagued against him. He 
dared not live alone in this ever-changing world ; 
he joined some league or society of soldiers, to 
secure for himself aid in time 'of need. But the 
most common way of obtaining support was to 
recommend himself to some chief, either a large 
landowner or the ^captain of many soldiers* The 
recommendation consisted in putting into the hands 
of this chief, his domain, his al-od or freehold, and 
receiving it .back under the title of benefice, as 



48 A SHORT HISTORY 

if it had been detached from the estate of his 
chief. 

Soon there were scarce any al-ods or independ- 
ent estates ; there were only benefices, the lesser 
warriors having recommended themselves to cer- 
tain chiefs, and the latter having done the same 
in their turn to more powerful lords or to the 
king. 

With the number of benefices, the occasions for 
war increased. We can easily fancy the fate of 
peasants and coloni under these pitiless enemies 
We will return to them shortly. . 



IX. 



While the beneficiaries were struggling to make 
their benefices hereditary and were daily approach- 
ing this end, in spite of kings and patrons, the 
public officials were trying to do the same with 
their posts. 

Little as the Frankish kings governed they 
had, however, established dukes, counts, centuri- 
ons, and decurions, as rulers over districts very 
different in importance : these officers presided 
at the assemblies of frecipen, the mallum or 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 49 

assizes of the Franks ; they transmitted to the 
kings appeals for war ; they controlled the sol- 
diery. 

Of course, these oJBficers could originally be re-- 
called by command of the king; but, from the 
first, they wisked to make themselves independent 
in their duties, and to bequeath these duties to 
their children. They succeeded, at the same time 
that beneficiaries triumphed on their side, and 
from the following causes. 

The Roman emperors hiad often rewarded the zeal 
and devotion of their agents, by allowing them 
to exercise, for their own profit, the duties of ad- 
ministration. For instance, they granted to an 
official all or part of the revenue he collected, or 
let him apply to his own use the corporal service 
due from subjects, upon government lands, in le- 
gions, or as messengers of the Empire. These 
concessions were called honors, (honores). Some- 
times the imperial liberality was bestowed upon 
gentlemen landowners : to these the emperor gave 
immunities ; that is, he made them a gift of the 
taxes, which should have been levied upon their 
estates, upon' their coloni or farmers The coloni 
and farmers, of course, had to pay the same ; but, 
instead of paying to the fisc, they gave the money 
to their masters, by order of government agents, 

4 



5o A SHORT HISTORY 

or, perhaps, the latter remitted it to the masters, 
after collecting it. Still further, the fines assessed 
^J judges were given by the emperor to these 
same judges or to other persons. 

The barbarian kings, when installed in the van- 
quished country, tried to keep all the traditions 

. of the . imperial system, to levy all the imposts and 
taxes suggested by the Eomans. We shall soon 
see how well they succeeded with the Frankish 
warriors, their compatriots. Certain it is, that, if 
these latter paid the impost but irregularly, the 
Gallo-Romans did not fare- so well. • They con- 
tinued to be oppressed in the name of legal tradi- 

•tion, while, at the same time, they were robbed 
in the name of the rights of conquerors. After 
the example of the emperor, the Frankish kings 
granted immunities and honors. Immunity was an 
almost universal measure, as regarded estates be- 
longing to churches or monasteries. As these es- 
tates were very numerous, and daily becoming 
more so, the kings lost, in this way alone, a good 
share of their budget. 

The immunities granted to large landholders, the 
honors yielded to officials, also increased with 
time. The same need and hope of attaching the 
warriors, whfch had led the kings to give estates, 
prompted their liberality with the different taxes. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 



5^- 



It was a dangerous course ; the kings .thus de- 
prived themselves of resources, made disobedience 
easy, and forced themselves to new concessions, 
besides creating a precedent, which other warriors 
and officials were only too ready to follow. 

Seeing around them men allowed to keep the 
revenues formerly claimed by the State, each offi- 
cial wished a similar advantage. By the side of 
proprietors regularly endowed with immunities and 
honors, rose many, who made the endowments for 
themselves. There appeared a general tendency 
to usurp all revenues due from the Gallo-Romans 
to the kings, who had succeeded to the fisc ; to 
quote one example, the counts and centurions soon 
reserved, for their own use, all or part of the legal 
fines. 

Hence it happened that the kings were gradu- 
ally cut off even from the revenues of the estates 
they had kept for themselves ; the penury to 
which they were reduced, or, rather, to which 
they had reduced themselves by their own lack 
of foresight, allowed the greatest and most radical 
usurpations. 

Money, we have seen, was very scarce, more 
scarce even than under the Eoman dominion. 
The emperor had been forced to pay officials, in 
part^ with produce. 



52 A SHORT HISTORY 

Under the barbarian rule, it became a. custom to 
attach to each office an estate, of greater or less 
extent, which should repay the official for his la- 
bor. This was a custom so general, and believed 
so advantageous, that lesser services, if permanent, 
— for example^, that of intendant on a farm, — 
were rarely paid in any other manner. 

Now it is a law of nature that possession of 
land or houses should be hereditary ; the human 
mind cannot accept this possession as for life 
.only. A man has cultivated the soil of an estate,- 
•has improved it, has lived there a long time, his 
children have been born and have grown up there. 
Public opinion unanimously holds that this man 
has made the estate his own, since he has put 
into it something of himself, which cannot be 
taken away. 

Whenever an official died, and the king ap- 
pointed a successor, the family of the deceased 
functionary had to be expelled from the estate, 
which belonged to the office. This always caused 
serious difficulties. . The family thought itself 
robbed, and indulged in protests, which were 
echoed by the public; Sometimes " resistance was 
made : force had to be used, with most disastrous 
result. This state of thing-s could not continue. 
Either the office must be independent of estates, 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 53 

which was impossible,' there being no money 
wherewith to pay, or the estate must hold the of- 
fice by hereditary descejit, as was most natural. 

The latter alternative was chosen, as, indeed, 
it must of necessity have been. 

Usurpation, however, was not the only cause of 
the establishment of the feudal system. The kings 
sometimes only confirmed the encroachments of 
their officers ; but sometimes they went half way, 
and, of their own accord, abandoned to their agents, 
or to private individuals, a more or less extensive 
share of their power. 

When the hereditary right to benefices and 
public offices was admitted without question, that 
political organization which we call feudalism was 
founded. 

Feudalism was maintained for nearly five cen- 
turies ; France kept traces of it much longer, 
even until the Revolution. It is important to take 
careful note of its origin. • • 

It was in S'lt A. D., that hereditary right to 
public offices was recognized by the king; -Charles 
the Bald, .grandson of Charlemagne. The inheritr 
ance of benefices became general at the same 
time. So feudalism dates from the end of the 
ninth century. About three hundred ai;id sixty 
years had elapsed since the death of Clovis. The 



54 A SHORT HISTORY 

only iraportant act of these three centuries and a 
half had been to form this system. , Whoever 
knows what we have just described, knows the 
fundamental point of this period : the battles, the 
assassinations, the overwhelming misfortunes of 
kings and princes, are only the outside of its his- 
tory ; a history which is made obscure and com- 
plicated by a crowd of dramatic events. 



X. 



But there was in feudalism something more 
than the heritage of benefices and offices ; to 
understand this other aspect of the system, we 
must know the condition of the provinces,' from 
the fifth to the tenth century. 

The barbarians found the rural population di- 
vided into two classes, — slaves and coloni, or serfs, 
the latter, much more numerous. The reader will 
remember this, as well as the difference between 
the two conditions. The first result of the serious 
disturbances and infinite cruelty, which followed the 
establishment of the barbarians, and the wars of 
the Merovingian and Carlovingian kings, was a 
large increase in the class of slaves. The Frank- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 55 

ish warriors, never returned from an expedition 
without bringing coLoni and freemen, dragged from 
the estates they had passed. 

These were prisoners of war, and were conse- 
quently treated without consideration, and reduced 
to the worst of conditions, that of slavery. Con- 
sidering the barbarism of the conquerors, the mis- 
ery of the conquered is not surprising. So a large 
number of coloni w.ent down one degree, and 
many freemen two. 

Police and security were a cipher ; even a 
Frankish soldier could not, single-handed, defend 
himself from the fierce attacks threatening on all 
sides ; how much more impossible was it for a 
simple freeman of Gallo-Roman origin ! The cen- 
tral government, royalty, which ill represented what 
we call the State, could do nothing for him. The 
only thing a freeman could do to win a little of 
that security which was everywhere lacking, was 
'to put himself under the protection, the main- 
bournie, as they called it, of some chieftain or 
neighboring lord ; or, what amounted to the same 
thing, under the protection of the nearest convent, 
which had soldiers in its pay. The lord, naturally, 
would not accept this office of protector, with- 
out equivalent. The freeman would deed his es- 
tate to the lord, wh'o then restored it as a gift. 



56 A SHORT HISTORY 

but under condition of an annual rent." Or worse 
might happen, and the lord force him to hold the 
land; not as freeman, paying rent, but as colonus, 
with all the dependence belonging to that rank, so 
that many freemen descended to the grade of eoloni. 

The barbarian warriors, who tumultuously ruled 
the country, were not people to discern or respect 
the original distinctions of the men they found 
there, established on domains, or cultivating the 
surrounding land. They were inclined to treat all 
with equal violence, and, with the same spirit of 
despotism, to exact from each, not what he le- 
gally owed, but whatever it pldased them to de- 
mand. Many coloni, beneath an unbridled mas- 
ter, became slaves ; many freemen became coloni, 
or even slaves, upon the selfsame spot where 
they had formerly held higher rank. 

Public and private wars, with their train of 
fires and mg,ssacres, were constantly overturning 
the population. Crowds of men were, so to speakf 
lifted from the ground, and scattered like dust. 
There was no money • for the fugitives to take 
away ; no one had any at this time ; so they died 
of hunger ; all could not find employment in trades 
nor earn a living as day-laborers. The land was 
everywhere cultivated by coloni, a kind of im- 
movable farmer who left no room for accidental 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 57 

labor. Goloni, too, exercised all the trades needed 
in each place. There was no way of support but 
to hold land by some tit^e, or enter the service of 
a chieftain. Our fugitives had but one course 
open to them, — to beg land of a- lord. If the lat- 
ter granted this, it was upon the most burden- 
some conditions : he was master of the situation. 
There have come down to us, from that time, deeds 
in which the poor, ruined wretch declares, that he 
submits to the power of such a lord, either as 
slave or colonus, in return for food and clothing. 
Then, what must have been their condition in the 
service of men without humanity or conscience ! 

For all these reasons, the class of freemen al- 
most wholly disappeared in the country. IIow 
many remained, we do not know ; but one thing 
Is certain, there was no free landj that is, land 
which did not owe a tribute to some one. At 
the moment when the confusion that himg over 
this afflicted period clears away, and the internal 
workings become visible, we find there is no es- 
tate without a lord; all estates are either benef- 
ices, also called fiqfs, or censives,.iha,t is, manors 
paying a cens or quit-rent to a lord, according as 
they belonged to noble landholder or plebeian free- 
man. 

If the disorder of the time tended to destroy 



58 A SHORT' HISTORY 

liberty, it must be acknowledged-, on the other 
•hand, that it tended to improve slavery, and lift 
it a little towards freedom, — this on account of 
a trait of character peculiar to the conquerors. 
The Eomans liked to be served in their houses 
by a crowd of slaves, and employed them in all 
domestic offices, even to putting the attendants on 
a footing of unavoidable intimacy with their mas- 
ters ; .it .was with his slaves, perhaps, that each 
master spent the most time : this, indeed, made 
the servitude more bearable, but it would have 
perpetuated slavery forever. The Germans, on 
the contrary, disliked extremely to be surrounded 
by slaves, who were the object of their bitter 
scorn. The Frankish warrior preferred the ser- 
vice of his family, his children, his relatives, or 
poorer companions, who were half servants, half 
friends. Household service had nothing .humili- 
ating in their eyes. Little by little, they sent all 
slaves from the house to the farm, to be employed 
solely upon the land. The slave thus became like 
a colonus in occupation, habits, and, no, doubt in 
dress. It was soon very hard to distinguish be- 
tween them, particularly as no register was kept. 
In the tenth century, slavery had wholly disap- 
peared into colonage, but into a transformed, ag- 
gravated colonage, which now became a middle 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. • 59 

term between slavery and the old colonage Col- 
oni and slaves were united in a single class, much 
the most numerous, and called by ai common 
name — serfs. The reader may not understand 
the difference between the old slave and the serf 
of the middle ages, — between the old colonus and 
the serf. The clearest explanation is, that the 
slave could be sold, snatched from his family, his 
wife and children, — from the place where he had 
always lived, — from his habits and trade ; he might 
see his existence wholly changed, and die, as it 
were, to his past life several times before his act- 
ual death, — whilst the serf was attached to the 
soil. If he could not leave it, neither could he 
be sent away ; of property, he had almost none, 
but he had a fatherland and a family, at least by 
right, barring the accidents of violence, which 
must always be understood. He lived in great 
poverty, but among his own people and in his 
own house. The colonus, too, was chained to the 
soil, but, by strict care, he might gain a certain 
independence ; for the sum to be paid his master 
was regularly fixed, whereas the serf was at the 
mercy of his master. These were the " essential 
differences in rights ; for, I repeat, a reservation 
must alwa^ys be made as regards facts. It is im- 
possible to know whether, owing to the rapacity 



6o A SHORT HISTORY 

of the Roman fisc, the colonus was ever really in 
a happier condition than the serf of the middle 
ages. • 

These remarks do not apply merely to the 
country. The fate of the inhabitants of bourgs 
and small cities did not differ much from that of 
the rural populace ; both fell almost entirely into 
the great class of serfs. The former, instead of 
being bound to the soil were bound to a trade ; 
that was all the difference. In lar^^e cities alone, 
the artisans and workmen kept, for the most part, 
the position of freemen, which, however, did not 
save them from extortion at the hands of the lords 
who were settled either in neighboring castles or 
in well-fortified mansions within the city walls. 

In some cities, especially towards the south, a 
shadow of the ancient curia, a certain municipal 
government, was kept until the political resurrec- 
tion of the cities, in the eleventh century. But 
it was hot to this feeble government that the 
workmen owed their escape from servitude ; rather 
it was the freedom of the people which saved 
the government. The dwellers in cities no doubt 
owed the preservation of their franchise to a cer- 
tain power of resistance, which naturally resides 
in numbers, to the mutual education which men 
acquire from daily intercourse, and, finally, to the 
wealth which industry creates in cities. 



\ 

3^\ 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 6 1 



XI. 



It seems certaiD that the Roman proprietors ex- 
ercised over their coloni, and even over freemen, 
their farmers and husbandmen, a judiciary power, 
of which the limits are still unknown. After, the 
establishment of the barbarians, the Roman mag- 
istrates, presidents and consuls, of course disap- 
peared. By whom were they replaced ? 

The barbarians had their form of justice, of 
which we have spoken. The Frankish warrior 
was judged in civil, as in criminal cases, by his 
companions, his peers, over whom presided de- 
curion, centurion, count, or even king. But could 
these tribunals decide Gallo-Roman cases ? We 
must admit, I believe, that they decided all cases 
in which a Frank was interested. Probably, too, 
the conquerors assumed the right to judge crimes 
committed by the conquered, even when the vic- 
tim was a Gallo-Roman. So the Frankish tribu- 
nals held Jurisdiction over, 1st, all criminal cases ; 
2nd, civil cases, where one party was of Germanic 
race. There remained civil cases between the 
conquered, the Gallo-Romans themselves. It is 
almost certain that these too were decided by 



62 ' A SHORT HISTORY 

counts, centurions, &c. ; but the question has 
never been settled whether these judges gave the 
sentence, or only presided over a court composed 
of Gallo-Eomans, peers of the two contestants. 
In any case, the tribunal of counts took cogni- 
zance of cases between free Gallo-Romans only ; 
the serfs carried theirs before the domestic tribu- 
nal of their master. 

This state of affairs couM not last. There en- 
sued, .in the forms of justice, a series of changes, 
all moving in the same direction with every thing 
else ; that is, towards the creation of a crowd of 
petty sovereignties, — towards the establishment of 
the feudal system. 

A word will explain what happened, and leave 
us free to consider the way in which it was ef- 
fected. The proprietors, the lords, were in time 
the sole judges, taking the place of tribunals of 
peers collected -undei: the presidency of royal of- 
ficials. They thus acquired the first privilege 
of kings, — that of administering justice. 

Now, let us see the steps by which this was 
reached. It is clear, that each warrior, when es- 
tablished on his domain, aspired to absolute con- 
trol in his own house, and to the right of giving 
final judgment, without foreign interference, in the 
affairs of his serfs, so much the more that there 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 63 

was a. precedent for this in the judiciary power 
of the Roman lords. Then, as he forced the free- 
men of his neighborhood to put themselves under 
his guardianship, he claimed the right to judge 
these freemen. He, at length, fully realized his 
claims, at the very time when he had also obtained- 
the hereditary right to benefices, and for the same 
reason, —r- that the royal power had become help- 
less against the united demands and ambitions of 
the lords. 

It remains to be seen how the tribunals of counts, 
&c., disappeared in their turn. The Frankish land- 
owner was bound to others by the claims of 
which I have already spoken. He was the vassal 
of another more powerful Frank, from whom he 
had received his benefice, "and himself had vassals 
to whom he had granted benefices. Seignior and 
vassals formed among themselves a sort of private 
society, very distinct and visible in the midst of 
general society, which was then so disjointed as 
to seem no society at all. It was suited to the 
ideas of the time, that thes^ members of the same 
body should administer justice among themselves, 
without the intervention of any outside power ; and 
this took place. Each vassal was judged by his 
co-vassals, his peers, under the direction of the 
seignior. There are some authors who call this 



64 A SHORT HISTORY 

form of justice, feudal, in opposition to justiciary 
justice, the old public' justice exercised by the 
counts. So there arose, besides the tribunals pre- 
sided over by royal agents, and besides justiciary 
justice, courts of seigniors. 

Public justice, as I said, had been usurped by 
the officials, who were commissioned to exepute it ; 
it fell from the hands of the central power into 
those of counts, viscounts, &;c. These being 
seigniors, possessors of fiefs, and members of the 
feudal body, already executing feudal justice, ad- 
ministered .the two powers in the same manner 
and with the same judges. Consequently the pow- 
ers, derived from the two sources, were soon in- 
distinguishable iji the single court. Public justice 
was merged in feudal justice. 

The gradual revolution, which resulted in the es- 
tablishment of feudalism, I believe to have been 
inevitable. Remember that these Prankish war- 
riors entered Gaul with habits and instincts of 
fierce independence, under the command of a 
chief who was, after all, only their equal, and in 
no respect a king. They found, it is true, among 
the conquered, the remembrance and traditions of 
a central power, ruling individual wills, — the mem- 
ory of an emperor in whose name taxes were col- 
lected and justice administered ; but, naturally, 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 65 

these memories and traditions were by no means 
to their taste, and they felt no wish to accept a 
similar master. The chief, their king, was indeed 
of a contrary opinion ; he would have liked to re- 
produce the Roman empire for his own advantage, 
but means were wholly lacking. 

Evidently Clovis dreamed of becoming a king, 
according to the Gallo-Roman idea of royalty ; 
and, owing to his unusually energetic character, 
his military talents, and his tact, he became as 
completely master as was possible in his age. 
But his successors, having none of the same per- 
sonal resources, deserved and received much less 
obedience. Under them, royalty retrograded. 
Tl>ey were without the weapons to hew for them- 
selves, at the expense of their leudes, a kingdom 
of either ancient or modern type. They could 
have used but one method successfully to crush 
the independence of the Franks ; this was to form 
an army of the conquered nations, and employ it 
against their compatriots, — a dangerous method 
truly, for the Gallo-Roman army might then have 
driven themselves away. This idea would never 
have occurred to these barbarians, who were filled 
with scorn for the conquered race. 

W.e know that the descendants of Clovis, who 
are called Merovingian kings, from their first 

5 



66 A SHORT HISTORY 

known leader, Meroveeus, were, through a revcfiu- 
tion, which I will not relate, the causes being 
superficial or obscure, -^ were, I say, dethroned 
and followed by a new family, the Carlovingians, 
so called, from Carolus, Charles, Charlemagne, or 
Charles the Great, the most distinguished of his 
line. Under the Carlovingians, the relations of the " 
kings and Frankish chiefs were unchanged, the 
latter striving for absolute independence, which 
the former tried to curb. Charlemagne succeeded 
in forming for himself a vast empire, which in- 
cluded Oaul, Germany, part of Italy, and part of 
Spain ; he. more particularly succeeded in being 
obeyed in Gaul, by the leudes, as no other bar- 
barian king ever had been. So, under him, justice 
was really administered in his name ; his call to 
war was always heard and heeded ; the adminis- 
trative orders he gave were almost always executed; 
but all this was due to his strong and persistent 
will, — to his military skill and courage, before 
which his leudes bowed, — to his eloquence, — in a 
word, to his genius ; his success was purely the 
effect of personal might. His descendants, with- 
out his genius, could not establish their power. 

All that is essential in political history up to 
the ninth century, can be summed thus : feudal- 
ism was established : this was the necessary course 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 6*J 

of events ; it was suspended only for a momen£ 
by the genius of Charlemagne. 

The dimensions of this little book will not al- 
low me to recount here the turns oT fortune which 
destroyed the kingdom of- Charlemagne, and, from 
its fragments, created six or seven kingdoms. 






XII. 



Now we will see feudalism in operation. 

The tenth and eleventh centuries were marked 
by innumerable private wars ; that is, wars be- 
tween seigniors. 

We have constantly to repeat that the seigniors 
were like so many kings, and made war among 
themselves, like kings, only much more frequently. 
It was but seldom that one of these petty mon- 
archs was at peace with all his neighbors. 

At the present time, the scene of war is usu- 
ally confined. to the frontiers of the two countries. 
There, in a space more or less extended, but within 
that space alone, it lets loose its horrors, and 
spreads desolation. On each side of this limit, 
two vast countries continue to live and work in 
security. At the time of which we speak, from 



68 ' ■ A SHORT HISTORY 

the fact that the soil was divided into an infinite 
number of little states, every place was upon a 
frontier, or very near it. The moment one of 
these small states engaged in warfare, there was 
not an inch of its territory sheltered from the 
enemy. As few of these states ever were at peace, 
war was always raging everywhere. 

The seigniors made war thus constantly, because 
they had no weighty tribunals to settle quarrels. 
With no judges to pass sentence, and no police to 
execute it, each man must protect himself. And, as 
these lords were kings, and had subjects, and nat- 
urally forced these subjects to help in their con- 
tests, every misunderstanding betv/een seigniors 
resulted in war. Thus also did royal quarrels end, 
and for the same reason, — there w#.re no courts. 

So every dispute, which, between two citizens 
of our day, would give rise to^ a lawsuit, then 
gave rise to wars. Moreover, men were infinitely 
more violent, more grasping, more dishonest then 
than now, so that subjects for quarrels were much 
more common. • 

I have said that there were literally no courts 
to interpose between seigniors ; let us see. 

We saw how a quarrel between seigniors was 
decided towards the . end of the ninth century. 
In the two following ages, there was no change in 



. OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 69 

this respect. The two opposing lords must come 
before their peers, the other lords, all vassals 
of a common suzerain, who presided over the court. 
But here arose the first difficulty. There was no 
one to force the suzerain to decide the case. He 
was not dependent on any one ; he could not be 
constrained ■ to pass judgment, and often did not 
care to decide*. Nor was there any power to oblige 
the suzerain to give impartial sentence ; there was 
no one over him to whom he must render account, 
nor was" there within him a governing conscience. 
It would not have been so serious, if he had had 
no interest, and the parties haji been unknown to 
him ; but, on the contrary, they were his vassals, 
the people with whom he had most frequent and 
important relations. It was for his advantage to 
favor the one most devoted to himself, or most 
capable of furnishing soldiers for his little empire ; 
and, though simply presiding officer, the means 
were in his hands to decide the case as he pleased. 
He chose the peers, and could select those in his 
service, so much the more easily, because it was 
very certain, that, if not summoned, the peers 
would not protest ; they had no wish to leave 
their castles and families, to make an enemy of the 
lords whom they pronounced in the wrong. It is 
plain that this office of judge was a thankless 



70 A SHORT HISTORY 

one, and that the lords of the middle ages were 
peculiar litigants. On account of the unwilling- 
ness of peers to come, it was agreed that a small 
number should suffice to form a tribunal ; in some 
. provinces, two peers were enough. The suzerain 
could easily find two men wholly at his command. 
When he did not insist upon the attendance of 
his creatures, in order to perpetrate an injustice, 
it often happened that two or three of the lords 
summoned would not appear, and, when they came, 
perhaps one of the litigants, or even both, would 
be absent. In the first place, they had no confi- 
dence in the impartiality of the judges, and we 
must own that this distrust was well founded; 
every one shared it: then, there reigned among the 
seigniors a kind of foolish pride, which raade it 
repugnant to them to submit to the will of man, 
whoever he might be. At heart, each baron cher- 
ished the haughty thought, that he held from God 
alone. And, besides, all were sure that the trial 
would end in an ordeal, or an appeal to God ; 
that is, a duel. It was then so hard to collect 
the witnesses of a deed, and, particularly, to make 
them tell the truth, and judges of that day were 
so incapable of discerning truth among contradic- 
tory statements, that recourse was almost always 
had to these arbitrary means of reaching it. Now 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 7 1 

ordeals were not acceptable to the seigniors, and 
duels even less so ; they preferred war. In judi- 
cial duels, the vanguished, if not killed by his foe, 
was put to death by order of the judge, or taxed 
according to discretion. War was .less dangerous, 
and even had certain advantages. 

When, by chance, the peers had assembled, the 
contestants had appeared, and judgment had been 
given, without ordeal or duel, something still re- 
mained to be done ; this was to execute the sen- 
tence. It was but rarely that the loser yielded 
with good grace to the decision, especially in se- 
rious cases, involving life or liberty. It was also 
rarely that he could be seized at once ; for he took 
care not to appear without a large retinue : be- 
sides, feudal law allowed a convict to go first to 
his home ; so he would take shelter in his castle, 
arm his serfs, and prepare for desperate defence. 
On principle, it was the duty of the lords and su- 
zerains to besiege him, that their sentence might 
not become a dead letter ; but usually they neg- 
lected to fulfill this obligation, which would have 
made the office of justice a very uncomfortable 
one. 

It was the winning side, to which it was of 
more consequence to see the sentence executed, 
which undertook the campaign ; but, ip any case, it 
was always war. 




7Z A SHORT HISTORY 

Never was there so great a . need of a strong- 
ly organized judiciary force as at that time, 
when there was none at all. Many seigniors led 
the life of brigands, overrunning the country in- 
cessantly, roFbing rich merchants, who ventured 
upon the highway, stealing cattle, women, and serfs 
from neighboring lords, who, the next day, returned 
the visit, under pretext of reprisals. The lords 
kept up a constant exchange of violence, and a 
perpetual concert of recrimination, equally well 
founded on both sides. 

The feudal hierarchy was also an abundant source 
of wars, each vassal clinging to the hope of be- 
coming independent of his suzerain^ or, at least, of 
lessening his dependence ; each suzerain trying to 
subject his vassals still further, and to impose 
upon them more than the prescribed burdens. An 
eminent historian, M. Guizot, says that there was 
a multitude of wars, simply on the subject of 
castles. Each seignior made his own as strong as 
possible ; but, whenever he reinforced his walls, 
however little, all the neighboring lords, as well 
as the suzerains, attacked him, because they thought 
this fortification a menace, and with reason ; just- 
as at the present day, when one government in- 
creases its army, the others consider themselves 
threatened ; explanations follow, then blows. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 73 

With all this, private wars would not have been 
so common but for another most unworthy cause, 
which made them dear .to the hearts of the seign- 
iors. This was, that, owing to the way in which 
they were conducted, they brought little danger 
and much profit. Now, it is agreed, that, when 
two nations are at war, the soldiers of the two 
armies are the only ones to be attacked ; the un- 
armed inhabitant must be respected, to whatever 
country he belongs. This law regarding the rights 
of people is a strictly modern one. In the mid- 
dle ages, quite contrary were the proceedings be- 
tween seigniors. Each lord first attacked the 
peasants belonging to his foe ; he killed the men 
or led them captive, violated the women, stole 
every thing he could carry, burnt the villages, de- 
vastated the harvests, woods, and vines. He took 
money, grain, wines, &c., to enrich himself; and 
destroyed every thing else to impoverish his enemy, 
thus making it impossible for the peasants to pay 
their rents. This system of gener^L destruclion, 
under pretext of impoverishing the foe, has indeed 
long outlived the middle ages. Louis XIV em- 
ployed it, to the scandal of the civilized world, in 
Holland, where he burned the villages by hundreds 
in the Palatinate, and where even large cities were 
given to the flames. To return to our seigniors, 



74 A SHORT HISTORY 

they often avoided one another, as by tacit con- 
sent ; while one laid waste the seigniory of his 
adversary, the latter retaliated; and the object 
of each was to effect the most thorojigh -ruin. 
From this, we can judge the fate of the rural 
inhabitants, and the interest a peasant could take 
in an estate, which, besides, did not belong to 
himself, and from which he could gain nothing but 
bare subsistence, even under the most favorable 
circumstances. Nc 



XIII. 



The ninth and tenth centuries were not only 
thq period of private warfare, but also that of the 
invasion of the Normans or Northmen. 

The invasion of the Normans was the last as- 
sault of the barbarian nations upon the old civi- 
lized world. They were the last out-come of bar- 
barism. Of Germanic race, like the Franks and 
Visigoths, they inhabited Denmark and Sweden. 
The journey by land would have been too long, 
and would, besides, have forced them to conquer 
a multitude of tribes before reaching France ; so 
they came in small bands, upon light boats, which 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 75, 

they managed with remarkable skill and boldness. 
They entered all the rivers, sailed up the broad 
streams, and indeed penetrated wherever the wa- 
ter was deep enough to float their boats, coming 
and going with surprising rapidity, and every- 
where leaving, utter desolation. Bold, swift, brave 
to frenzy, they conquered or evaded troops far 
superior in numbers. It does not appear that the 
feudal lords, who were so brave in fighting against 
the serfs of their neighboring foemen offered very 
stout resistance to the Normans ; they shut them- 
selves into their castles, whence they calmly 
watched the devastation of the surrounding coun- 
try, and some even had no scruples against form- 
ing alliance with the Normans, and themselves 
guiding the pillage. The boldness of the pi- 
rates increased : at first, they had confined their 
ravages to the river valleys, and taken care 
to keep near their boats ; gradually, having met 
so little resistance, they ventured into the in- 
terior_ of the country, and went as far as the 
centre of France, to Limoges, which they sacked ; 
they besieged Paris three times in twenty years. 
At their fourth attack, in 886, they were re- 
ffhlsed after a siege of several months. The 
last kings of the Carlovinigan race, powerless to 
repel these barbarians, often bribed them to leave. 



*]6 A SHORT HISTORY 

One, Charles the Simple, granted to a Norman 
chief, Rollo, the province which has since been 
called Normandy. The latter, now interested in 
the national peace, defended the valley of the 
Seine from the incursions of his old companions ; 
aiid the gate by which the Normans had most 
quickly reached the heart of France was shut, and 
shut tight. Soon after, the Norman invasions 
ceased from other causes. Their activity was 
turned towards Rus^a and the East, and some 
of them, being converted to the Catholic faith, re- 
nounced their habits of maritime expeditions for a 
more regular life. 

It was not owing to the Normans that strong 
castles were built and cities surrounded by walls; 
this had been a custom from the first establish- 
ment of the barbarians, — from the time that Ro- 
man security and order disappeared ; but it was 
owing to the Normans that this custom became 
more active and general. Places liable to attack, 
cities and villages built upon the plain, were 
slowly abandoned as too dangerous ; towns in- 
clined, so to speak, to ascend hills and mount- 
ains and other steep places difficult of access. 
Gorges, defiles, and narrow passages became iJhe 
sites of buildings, showing various degrees of for- 
tification, but all fortified. Well would it have 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. ^7 

been if these fortresses had served only for de- 
fence ; but most of the owners used them to keep 
the fruit of their rapine in safety, and to escape 
punishment after • their freebooting raids. The 
lords of these castles, more than any one else, 
made the castles necessary ; so the evil came from 
the remedy. 

No epoch was ever more frighful for the poor 
peasant : with no hope, since he owned no land 
and had no chance of becoming rich ; with none 
of the comforts or even necessaries uf existence, 
life was to him a perpetual agony. We must 
understand, that, around each castle, was, generally, 
a large palisaded enclosure, built to receive the 
serfs of the domain and their cattle, at the ap- 
proach of the enemy. To live in his hut, like a 
hare in its lioUow, with his ear always on the 
alert; — to cultivate out of season, and against his 
will, barren soil; — at the slightest sound of danger, 
to take refuge in the seigniorial enclosure ; — to 
encamp there in want and fear, hardly sheltered 
and not at all fed, a prey to epidemic diseases, 
which never fail to appear in the midst of un- 
healthy surroundings; — to go out, starved and 
trembling, to see his plot of ground and harvest in 
cinders; — to repair the damage, and begin again, 
with the prospect of another similar raid : such was 



78 A SHORT HISTORY 

the life of a peasant. Naturally, famine was per- 
manent ; and there was no cause of death more 
common than hunger, with its attendant diseases. 
The poor creatures felt it an impossibility that 
humanity could survive under this system ; and, 
seeing no change in the horizon, it is not aston- 
ishing that they believed the end of the world 
at hand. The year 1000 approached ; and the 
opinion spread and became fixed, that the' first 
hour of this year, marked by a prophetic cipher, 
would be the last of humanity : fear fell upon all 
hearts. 

M. Morin very justly asks. Why this universal- 
ity of terror ? If the world thought its end at hand, 
it was because it saw evil everywhere and the rem- 
edy nowhere, — because it felt its own weakness, 
which betrayed itself like all dying weakness in 
visions*. 'European society was in paroxysms of 
agony, feeling that nothing could save it from an- 
nihilation. 

Yet this was not its fate. 

On the contrary, at this moment, humanity 
seemed to have reached the depths of the abyss, 
whence it then began to rise ; and soon new 
powers appeared on the surface, and destroyed 
the world of injustice and violence. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 79 



XIV. 

The year 1000 passed tranquilly, like an ordi- 
nary ^ear, and neither was the sun extinguished 
nor the earth destroyed. It seems as though peo- 
ple said, when once this time had elapsed : — Since 
the earth is to endure, let us have a little order 
and peace, for our present existence is not to be 
borne. This idea first spread among the clergy. 
They, at least their chiefs, were somewhat more 
educated and honest than the gross and stupid 
baronage of the* period. 

From 1030 to 1032 were three years of constant 
rain. Hardly could men sow, and the grain did 
not germinate ; so the faniiii^ was terrible. A 
writer of that time says: '* We thought the hu- 
man race was to perish entirely ; all suffered from 
hunger ; large and small, rich and poor, wore 
upon their brows the same ghastly pallor. Bread 
cost fearful sums. People ate the bark of trees, 
the grass of the field, and dead bodies, which 
they disinterred : after that, they ate the liv- 
ing ; and the traveler, attacked on his journey, 
would fall a victim to the blows of men fierce 
with hunger, who shared his limbs. Others 



8o A SHORT HISTORY 

would offer eggs or apples to children, to tempt 
them aside, and then kill and eat them.^' Natu- 
rally, men thought themselves struck down by •di- 
vine wrath ; and this decided the clergy. They 
began everywhere to preach unity and peace, with 
irresistible enthusiasm. There must be no* more 
private wars ; every man must lay aside his arms, 
forget the past, his quarrels with his neighbors 
and their sins against him, and, in future, live ac- 
cording to justice. The people entered into these sen- 
timents with an eagerness we can well understand. 
Everywhere they cried "Peace! peace P^ Bish- 
ops and prelates, who had met in provincial coun- 
cils to make these good resolutions, decided to 
meet again in five years to maintain the institu- 
tion of the peace of God. 

As soon as the famine was a little forgotten 
and people were somewhat reassured, the peace 
of God fell to ruin, and the world resumed her 
disorderly courses. The clergy saw that they had 
gained nothing, because they had asked too much. 

When the provincial council met the second 
time, as appointed, they were less exacting and 
more politic. Instead of the peace of God, they 
established the triioe-cf^God. They decreed, un- 
der pain of excommunication, that, in each week, 
there_should be a space wherein all war should 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 8l 

be suspended — from Wednesday night to Monday 
morning ; the rest of the week, that is, for three 
days, they were allowed to fight as much as they 
chose. Feast days. Advent, and Lent were also 
sacred to peace. The seigniors were henceforth 
ordered to refrain^ from killing or mutilating un- 
armed peasants, and from the destruction of cat- 
tle and harvests. The truce of God was never 
observed with regularity, especially in this latter 
point ; still, it restrained, to a considerable ex- 
tent, the crimes and sufferings of war. 



XV . 



The cities gave birth to Industry. Whilst, in 
the country, each household produced almost 
every thing it needed, in tbe city there was di- 
vision of labor. Some cultivated the soil; some 
made clothing ; others, *shpes, objects of luxury, 
&c. Then they exchanged. Industry brought 
into the city the money necessary for exchange. 
The circulation of money, industry and commerce 
enriched a certain number of men, who, -becoming 
rich, became also independent. 

It was impossible that the rich burgesses, the 

6 



82 A SHOR':^ HISTORY 

successful tradespeople, should bear the seigniorial 
yoke with the same bitter patience shown by the 
peasants in their depths of toil and poverty. In 
the former it was that the spirit of protest and 
revolt awoke ; and they communicated it to all 
around them. 

We have now reached that interesting and im- 
portant portion of our history, known as the foun- 
dation of the communes. 

The foundation of a commune was in some re- 
spects a small revolution, a revolution kept within 
city limits. 

At first, some of the more courageous burgesses 
talked among themselves of the exactions and 
abuses of the seigniors, and strengthened them- 
selves by speech ; then, they sought means to put 
a stop to these extortions ; and, by degrees, these 
dreams and projects resulted in a clear and de- 
termined resolution, in fact, a conspiracy. 

It appears, that, in forming a conspiracy, the 
first idea of each membe'r is to assure himself of 
the secrecy and fidelity of his comrades, by im- 
posing an oath to live and die together: this was 
done by the burgesses of the middle ages ; they 
mutually swore to defend and to assist one an- 
other. Gradually, the conspiracy gained adher- 
ents ; and, when they become sufficient in num- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 83 

ber (the plot sometimes included almost every 
citizen), the revolution broke forth. 

The seignior had usually in the city a judge 
and sergeants, or soldiers, representing himself: 
the insurgents dr0|ve them out, not always with- 
out bloodshed ; but these sergeants were so much 
in the minority that there was -little- difficulty. 
This blow executed, the gates were shut. Once 
■free, and the gates firmly closed, the conspirators 
assembled all the inhabitants in some square, or, 
as squares then were very small, in the cemetery, 
and made the people swear, that, while life should 
last, they would defend the commune. This name 
was given to the new system on account of the 
unanimity, the community of sentiments which 
were its principle. The people, meantime, chose 
the most notable among the conspirators for mag- 
istrates, in some places under the name of con- 
sul, in others under that of sherifi" or mayor, and 
the municipal body was framed. 

The next step was to draw up the communal 
charter, which should decide the public condition 
of the citizens, — their relations towards the seign- 
ior and the new magistrates. Then, preparations 
had to be made for a seige by the seignior, who, 
without fail, would try to destroy the commune 
and punish the rebels. 



84 A SHORT HISTORY 

X 

The communists did not know against what 
strength they would have to contend. 

It might be that the seignior would be reduced 
to his own forces in the strife against the com- 
mune ; in that case, they were almost sure of 
victory ; but he might find allies among the no- 
bility of the province, who detested the commune, 
as the kings of Europe, in 1189, detested the Revo- 
lution ; or, even the kings of France, notified by. 
the seignior, might come to help in suppressing 
the revolt. 

The kings of France, whatever may have been 
said, did not, at least in the beginning, wish to 
favor the communes ; they rather opposed them as 
effects of that spirit of independence, which is al- 
ways suspected by the masters of the world. 
But this first and natural inclination of the kings 
often yielded to their interests ; and they frequently 
supported the communes against the seigniors, 
either to degrade those lords towards whom they 
ielt ill will, or because the communes had bought 
their protection with good money. 

This was the situation of the communists the 
day after their uprising. They had many chances 
against them, and, indeed, a large number of com- 
munes were destroyed, stifled in blood at their 
birth ; others, on the contrary, at first crushed 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 85 

and apparently dead, revived, were annihilated a 
second time, again revived, and this sometimes 
three or four times with unconquerable vitality. 
Others had an easy, scarce-questioned existence. 
Some even were formed with the consent of their 
seigniors, who were more just and enlightened 
than their contemporaries. All the diversities of 
fortune possible to individuals were felt by the 
communes. The southern communes, as a rule, had 
more brilliant careers than the northern ones, be- 
cause there were more burgesses and fewer nobles 
among them. ^ 

We come now to events , within the commune. 
We said that the leaders of the movement gave 
their first attention to framing a communal charter. 
This charter was to the city, what, in our century, 
the constitutions are to all France. In the char- 
ter was first decreed what should be the future 
relations between communists and seigniors, what 
taxes they should pay him, what they should re- 
pudiate. Of course, they largely reduced the list, 
the revolution being undertaken for this purpose ; 
and sometimes they abolished taxes altogether. 
The charter then fixed the number of magistrates 
in the commune, the duties of these magistrates, 
the extent of their powers, and the form by which 
they should be elected. Usually, the magistrates 



86 A SHORT HISTORY 

in office were invested with the right of present- 
ing their successors before a popular meeting, to 
be accepted or refused by acclamation. At first, 
this, no doubt, was a serious formality ; but it soon 
became a mere ceremony. In other cities, the 
magistrates offered two or three names, instead of 
one, that the people might at least make a choice. 
We know the names borne by these magistrates, — 
> sheriffs, mayors, consuls, councillors; the length 
of their term of office varied in different places 
from one to three or five years. In these points, 
the charters of the communes resembled the con- 
stitutions, to which we compared them. But they 
differed from these, and went further, in having, 
in a rudimentary state, a civil and criminal code, 
wherein general principles for the judgment of 
cases were given, and the forms expounded by 
which judges should decide civil as well as crimi- 
nal law. There were also rules, sometimes ex- 
tremely detailed, for the police of the city. In 
short, all matters which the deputies of France 
and the executive power, either separately or col- 
lectively, regulate at the present day, were then^ 
regulated by this single communal charter, though, 
of course, with much less of accuracy and detail. 
I said that each of these cities formed a sort of 
little nation. This was absolutely true of certain 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 87 

communes in the south, which were really inde- 
pendent republics, coining money, and making 
peace or war, either with other cities or with 
neighboring lords. These large cities, like Tou- 
louse, for instance, were dependent on their nomi- 
nal sot'ereigns only ,in theory, and, in the height 
of their prosperity, hardly paid even the duties of 
deference ; the name of republics alone was lacking. 

As there were infinite diversities in the fate of 
the communes and equally numerous degrees in 
the liberties they enjoyed, some going to the ex- 
treme limit of independence, others stopping half- 
way, or on the very threshold of the path, so 
there were communes of all degrees of size and 
importance, from Toulouse, of which 1 just spoke 
and which had perhaps 150,000 inhabitants, to 
some burgage of YOO or 800 souls. They ev?^^ 
sprang up where there was no community, among 
peasants in scattered huts. These, historians call 
rural communes ; but they were scarce, while the 
others, the civic communes, swarmed for a time 
like ant-hills Many, doubtless, did not long sur- 
vive, but some trace always remained. 

Wherever the cominune did hold, a gap was 
made in the feudal system. Its compactness was 
broken ; and not only within the communal city did 
the feudal system languish, or wholly disappear, 



88 A SHORT HISTORY 

but in the surrounding country the effect of the 
revolution made itself felt. The seigniors, half- 
ruined by the loss of their civic subjects, and 
sometimes, too, by the wars which the latter 
waged against them, had so much the less strength 
to hold under the old yoke their rural su^jyects, 
who, on the other hand, were less disposed to pa- 
tience. Everywhere, the lords were themselves 
forced to lighten the burden, lest it should be 
wholly cast aside. 

The communes were, if the expression may be 
allowed, the first attack of that mortal illness, 
which was eventually to destroy feudalism. Roy- 
alty did not sanction them ; but of themselves they 
assumed the duty of putting an end to the feudal 
system. 



XVI 



Before showing how the royal power, little by 
little, reduced, or rather absorbed, the power of 
each seignior, it will be wise briefly to recapitu- 
late the nature of feudalism in the eleventh cen- 
tury. 

The soil of France was divided into a multitude 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 89 

of seigniories, little hierarchical kingdoms, of dif- 
ferent ranks. Each seigniory, was, on one side, 
the vassal of a higher seigniory, and, on the other, 
suzerain of a lower one. At the two extremities 
of the ladder were the seigniories which were, 
in point of fact, independent of any suzerains, and 
the seigniories which were without vassals : this 
state of things was on the verge of a change ; 
the kings of France were about to seek, and gain 
suzerainty over all seigniories, from the smallest 
to the greatest. 

Every vassal owed his seignior homage for his 
land, when he entered upon possession at the death 
of his father ; this homage was a ceremony, by 
which the vassal, figuratively, resigned the estate 
to his suzerain, who restored it as a gift in re- 
turn for promise of services. 

The vassal promised to follow the suzerain to 
war, to lend him the aid of the sword in certain 
specified cases, to help him even with money ; and 
the ^suzerain in turn swore to protect the vassal. 

This was the sum of the relations of seigniors 
one to another. 

Now for the other side of feudalism — the atti- 
tude of the seignior towards the men who inhab- 
ited his seigniory. 

We said, that, at the end of the tenth century, 



90 A SHORT HISTORY 

there were very few freemen in the country ; still, 
there were some whom the seignior either had not 
reduced to servitude, or, having made serfs, .had 
afterwards freed, so that in each seigiriory there 
were, 1st, freerden ; 2nd, serfs. 

Servitude, was, by no means, a uniform condi- 
tion in all the seigniories, though it would be 
impossible to enumerate the many fine distinctions. 
SuflSce it to note the two great divisions, personal 
serfs, and land serfs. 

Personal. -sarfs, or serfs of the suite, were al- 
most slaves ; custom prevented their sale, but 
that was the only point of difference. Their 
masters could transfer them from one farm to an- 
othei|^ change their trade, require all their time 
and labor, put them in chains at pleasure, and seize 
them in any place to which .they had fled. 

Land serfa were less serfs of the seignior, than 
of the soil. The seignior could not separate them 
from an estate, nor require other service from 
them than that belonging to their business of ag- 
riculture. Generally, they could run away, leav- 
ing every thing behind them ; and the seignior had 
no right to pursue them. In this last class 
were, however, essential diJBferences. Some serfs 
had certain fixed rents to pay, and a regular 
amount of work to do, beyond which nothing 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 9I 

could be claimed by the seignior ; others were 
wholly at the mercy of their lord in these respects. 
Some, although subject to his pleasure in rents and 
labor, had a right to bequeath their property, while 
otbers, though only bound by fixed obligations, 
could make no wills. These latter, were said to 
be in mortmain ; for they lived freemen and died 
slaves ; whereas, the former lived slaves and died 
freemen. Besides all these, were some who were 
not only subject to the will of their seignior 
through, life, but after death were subject to mort- 
main ; they held, after personal serfs, the lowest 
rank in the feudal hierarchy, 

And even in mortmain, there were degrees. 
Some could bequeath nothing, and the seignior in- 
herited all their property ; others could dispose of 
their furniture ; still others, of only a portion of 
it. It must be understood that the serf, under no 
circumstances, could bequeath his property, with- 
out the tacit consent of his heir to pay, in his 
turn, the same duties to his seignior. 

Serfs, as a rule, could not marry without the 
sanction of their seigniors. 

To the serfs, the seignior was, as we see, more 
than a king : he was, in some degree, their pos- 
sessor ; with personal serfs, he was actually this, 
owning them, as one owns any thing, and doing 



92 A SHORT HISTORY . 

with them as he willed. Let us return, however, 
to the different services he could exact from them. 

First, a kind of tax, the taille ; but it was not 
the same from all serfs. As we said, there were 
some from whom the seignior could claim as much 
as he liked, whenever he liked ; these were tax- 
able at will : others from whom he could claim 
one taille a year, the sum being fixed ; these were 
called bound serfs. This was the ordinary taille ; 
but, besides, there was an extraordinary taille pay- 
able on four occasions, 1st, when the eldest son 
of the seignior, having come of age, was armed 
and knighted ; 2nd, when the eldest daughter was 
married ; 3rd, when the seignior went on a cru- 
sade or to war ; 4th, when a seignior was made 
prisoner, and needed a ransom.* 

The Gorveeif. — We must consider a seigniory 
as separated into two great divisions, 1st, the land 
which the seignior had granted, or was supposed 
to have granted, for cultivation, either to serfs or 
to freemen ; 2nd, the land which he kept around 
his castle for his own domains. If we do not 



*NoTE. — We warn the reader, once for all, that we are 
describing only the most common conditions. In thfe middle 
a<res, there was an infinite diversity in every thing ; and the 
book would never come to an end should we try to give every 
exception. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 93 

keep this distinction clear, we shall have no ex- 
act knowledge of corvees. This, the seigniorial 
domain, was cultivated by Inhabitants of the 
seigniory, who worked by corvees, that is, each 
person must give to this estate one, two, or three 
days of labor in each week ; generally, the kind 
of labor to be given by each family was specified, 
some to plough, others to reap, others to stack 
the hay. Not only the cultivation of the land was 
done by cormes, but house service also ; one wo- 
man was to do the sweeping Wednesday, another, 
Sunday ; one man must drive the lord on his 
travels, another must cut clothes for the soldiers," 
&c We shall presently see the origin of the cor- 
vees. 

Let us now pass to the hanalites, or monopolies. 
There was in each seigniory but one oven, one 
granary, one mill, — all the property of the 
seignior. The inhabitants of the seigniories could 
bake their bread, store their grain, and grind 
their corn nowhere but in these ovens, granaries, 
and mills, and, of course, the lords fixed the ratos 
to be paid. This obligation bore very heavily 
upon the people, not because the prices charged 
were exorbitant, but because of the many attend- 
ant, inconveniences ; for example, there being 
only one mill, it was crowded, — men coming 



94 



A SHORT HISTORY 



from the extreme limits of tlie seigniory were 
sometimes obliged to wait several days for their 
turn. 

The seigniory, instead of being pierced through- 
out with highways, had few roads, all of which 
were in bad condition. A carriage could hardly 
have been dragged through the mud in winter ; 
but there were no carriages, only two-wheeled 
carts used for transporting the harvest. The road 
was also used by horsemen, neighboring seigniors 
or merchants. 

These roads had been built by peasants, either 
spontaneously or by corvees, at the order of the 
seignior. For this reason, the seignior claimed 
a toll from each passenger. At a certain spot, a 
chain was hung across the way, and guarded by 
two or three disreputable looking men, who might 
easily have been mistaken for robbers, and who 
never drew the chain aside until the toll was 
paid. 

Such were the general claims affecting all serfs. 
Besides these were many, some affecting this class 
of people, others that class. Serfs about to marry 
must buy a for-mariage, or license ; artisans start- 
ing in trade must pay fees, which we will not 
enumerate, as they have various names; mer- 
chants selling in the market-place or at seigniorial 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 95 

fairs must pay aides, or duties, upon the value of 
objects sold. 

The serfs were not the only ones from whom 
corvees and taille were demanded ; freemen, too, 
were subject to them, but naturally paid only a 
fixed amount, like the better class of serfs. They 
were exempt from marriage fees and mortmain ; 
their corvees, too, were less heavy, but they had 
to pay a cens, or quit-rent, from which serfs were 
free. The land which the freeman owned was 
considered to have belonged originally to the 
seignior, who had sold or ceded it to the freeman 
in return for a rent. The cejis was this rent. 

This quit-rent was accompanied by the fee for 
lods and ventes. Whenever a freeman sold or gave 
away this land, which was always considered to 
belong- to his suzerain, he was forced to receive a 
warrant of the deed from the seignior, and pay in 
return a fee. Lods and ventes corresponded to the 
fees for registry of deeds, collected for the benefit 
of the State, which we have now. Summed^-up, 
the freeman was distinguished from the serf, 1st, 
in his power to bestow, exchange, or bequeath 
his property ; 2nd, in his freedom .from certain 
corporal punishments, which the master could in- 
flict upon serfs. Now we will return to royalty. 



gS A SHORT HISTORY 



XVII. 

The royal power, almost annihilated under Louis 
the Debonair, son of Charlemagne, began to in- 
crease in the twelfth century, and rose quickly. 
The kings began to play, and to play in good 
faith, a part which conciliated all the down-trod- 
den ; they offered themselves as guardians of order 
and security. 

The grateful people lent their aid against the 
seigniors, and helped to make the kings absolute 
masters of the nobles, and of themselves as well. 

This point reached, royalty exercised upon the 
people all the excesses inseparable from absolute 
power ; and these excesses inevitably produced 
the Revolution of 1189. 

The communes had been the spontaneous crea- 
tion of people resolved to gain liberty by their 
own hands. Unfortunately, in the twelfth century, 
the people thought they could all together make a 
similar attempt, and that the king would be their 
savior. They were cruelly deceived : the first 
things royalty destroyed were the communes ; 
then feudalism, soon after. 

If royalty had continued weak, feudalism would, 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 97 

in all probability, have lasted longer ; the com- 
munes would have taken more time for its over- 
throw ; but the result would have been the same. 
The destiny of France would have been different, 
and probably her part in the drama less brilliant : 
it is to be supposed that we should have missed 
some adventures of world-wide celebrity, and some 
glory, or rather fame ; but probably also we should 
now be richer, more peaceful, more free, and more 
happy. 

It was in the nature of things that royalty 
should rise in power. Ord ex, justice, and security 
are indispensible blessings. They had been so cru- 
elly lacking, their need had become so pressing, 
that the power which promised, and seemed able 
to give them, had upon its side, naturally, all the 
world except the feudal brigands. Even these 
might be moved by it, because justice never 
wholly loses its empire over the human soul, and 
royalty was the plainly indicated power destined 
to this office of justice. In fact, royalty has, in 
all time, but one plea for existence, — the need 
of a central force regulating every thing, that jus- 
tice may reign and order prevail. Doubtless the 
priests first unfolded to the Capetian kings the 
character belonging to their title ; for history re- 
cords that the Capetian princes were very devout, 



98 * A SHORT HISTORY 

• 

and extremely submissive to the influence of the 
clergy. ^ 

The Capetians were not the legitimate success-, 
ors of Charlemagne nor of the Roman emperors ; 
but they held the same position, and well knew, 
that, for centuries, supreme power had belonged 
to the title they bore, and they naturally cher- 
ished the ambition and hope, that they might 
some day recover the authority of their rank. 
The seigniors themselt^es were disposed to grant 
to the name of king a certain moral superiority, 
— an indefinite respect, which indeed was followed 
by no effective obedience, but still it was gener- 
ally conceded among them that the king of France 
had the right of suzerain over all the seigniors. 

This point was not to be scorned : the kings, 
starting thence, could exact and attempt much 
without departing from feudal law. 

Louis VI, called the Fat, fourth successor of 
Hugh Capet, and also his successors Louis VII, 
Philip Augustus, and Saint Louis, w^:cked, in the 
first plaice, to change their nominal into actual 
sovereignty. 

If they had seemed animated solely by personal 
ambition, they might not have succeeded so eas- 
ily ; but, profiting by the teachings of the clergy, 
they presented themselves as born defenders of 



/ 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 



99 



the weak, and guardians of order. These attributes 
of royalty first clearly showed themselves in Louis 
the Fat. He had as yet few resources, and especially 
was lacking in * soldiers, so that he had to limit 
his -deeds to the narrow sphere of his own do- 
mains — the Isle of France and Orleans; but, on 
this small theatre, at least, he valiantly played his 
part. Whenever his help was asked, by a seignior 
oppressed by a stronger, — by an abbey or church 
molested by neighboring lords, — there he has- 
tened, always in the field, always in harness. His 
life was spent in obscure but useful strife with 
the barons of the Isle of France, with the Bou- 
chards, lords of Montmorency ; with the lords of 
Monthlery, • of Puiset, and of Coucy, — who were 
almost as powerful as himself. 

We can, however, imagine the effect produced 
in countries tyrannized by these seigniors, by the 
recital of his expeditions, as they were doubtless 
told and commented upon by the priests, who were 
devoted to the new royalty. f^Serfs, peasants, and 
laborers had. henceforth a protector and avenger : 
there was at last some one on earth who wished 
roads to be safe, the life of the unarmed husband- 
man to be protected, villages to be spared from 
flames ; and this man was the King of France. 
I'he- history of the royal deeds and exploits, scat- 



lOO A 'SHORT HISTORY 

tered broadcast by the priests, quickly reached 
the extreijie limits of France, penetrating every- 
where : this, at least, is probable. 



XVIII. 



The work of Louis the Fat consisted, as we 
said, in confirming his position as king, and in es- 
tablishing the actual power of royalty over his 
immediate vassals, the seigniors who held from 
him directly, without intermediary. 

Louis yil, son of Louis VI, did nothing for his 
part but make a very brilliant marriage. Eleanor 
of Aquitaine brought him, as dowry, nearly all 
the south of France, — Touraine, Poitou, Saintonge, 
and Aquitaine. An explanation is here necessary. 
The states, properly speaking, of Louis the. Fat, 
comprised about five of our departments — Seine, 
Seine et Oise, Seine et Marne, Oise, and Loiret. 
But we must understand the nature of the regal 
power over these so-called royal states, and the 
manner in which the king owned them ; for this 
had nothing in common with the manner of royal 
possession in the present. 

These royal„stata& were, ^sL the domain, — the 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. lOI 

lands or cities belonging to him and to him alone, 
— where he reigned, administered justice, and 
levied taxes at his own will. There he was sole 
seignior, absolute master; 2nd, the estates com- 
posed of seigniories which held direct from the king. 
The owners of these seigniories were obliged to 
swear fealty to the king, pay him taille in certain 
cases, help him in the administration of justice, 
follow him to war ; and these duties they could, 
under no pretext, evade. Besides these domains 
and estates, he held suzerainty over indirect seign- 
iories. I will cite an example to show the posi- 
tion of those seigniors who held indirectly. The 
lords of Normandy had the king for suzerain, but 
the King of England, Duke of Normandy, for 
direct seignior. They owed the King of France 
fealty, taxes, assistance, military service ; but they 
owed these through their direct seignior, the duke. 
Wheti the king clainied their services, it must be 
through the duke. The latter was, in theory, ob- 
liged to grant the royal behest ; but, in practice, 
if he refused, the Norman lords were exempt. 
They were free, as regarded the king, whenever 
the duke chose to free them, his orders, by feudal 
right, antedating those of the king. Now, suppos- 
ing the duke revolted, and made war against the 
king, the seigniors were bound to follow the duke, 



I02 A SHORT HISTORY 

who thus, so to speak, took all guilt upon him- 
self. We see it made a decided difference to the 
king whether he held direct seigniory or suzer- 
ainty. 

I repeat, the seigniory of the king extended 
only over five of our departments f his suzerainty 
extended over alinost all France, theoretically 
speaking ; but this suzerainty can be easily es.ti- 
mated, as well as the respect paid by powerful 
lords, like the Duke of Normandy, King of Eng- 
land, or the Count of Toulouse, possessor of a 
large part of the south, to the distant suzerainty 
of a king, whose direct and present power the 
petty seigniors of the Isle of France did not heed. 
So, when I say that Eleanor of Aquitaine brought 
to Louis VII, Touraiine, Aquitaine, &c., it means 
that Eleanor owned these provinces, and brought 
them to the king, with all the distinctions pre- 
viously mentioned as existing in his own state, 
1st, domains ; 2nd, direct seigniories ; 3rd, suzer- 
ainty. 

Unhappily for royalty, this marriage did nol pro- 
duce its expected fruit. It was soon broken by 
divorce ; and Eleanpr then tnarried the King of 
England, to whose house she carried her large 
possessions, so that the King of England, already 
Duke of Normandy, became in France a much 
more powerful seignior than its king. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO3 

Under the same Louis VII, a new opinion was 
established, a new point of rights, which was 
more profitable than his martiage with the rich 
Eleanor. The communal sities claimed to hold di- 
rect from the king ; they claimed that by him 
alone they were raised into communes, that they 
had left the domains of their natural seigniors to 
enter that of the king. This was an idea utterly 
at variance with every thing previously established, 
and contrary to all the principles of feudalism. 
The interest which the inhabitants of communal 
cities had . in holding direct from the king, and 
their motive in proposing and upholding this new 
revolutionary measure are easily understood. Sup- 
pose the commune had lawsuits with the seigniors 
as to the taxes to be paid said seigniors (and the 
commune was never free from these lawsuits), the 
seignior was judge of the case, judge and con- 
testant at the same time ; this was revolting* to 
equity and common sense* So, when the commun- 
ists said, " We will hold direct from the king," 
it was the same as to say, " Let the king be 
judge between the city and the seignior, for the 
latter cannot at once be judge and. contestant." 

• Such was originally the meaning of the proverb, 
that the communes held dire.ct from the king. 
Later came more radical consequences. If the 



I04 A SHORT HISTOEY 

commune held direct from the king and he was 
the lawful seignior, of what use was the other, the 
former seignior ? Logic led to this conclusion. 
The burgesses, besides, abhorred the old seigniors, 
the secular tyrants, who had so molested them. 
Royalty, on the contrary, had as yet done them 
no harm ; little did they know it ; they looked 
upon the king as their support and savior. Im- 
bued with ancient ideas, which were re-awakened 
by the clergy, they fixed their hopes upon the 
king. On all sides, they called him to crush the 
feudal world, and resume the character of the Ro- 
man emperor. 

I have said that the kings entered upon Iheir 
part without full knowledge of how it should be 
performed, so that they acted it very unequally. 
They often abandoned it to become again" purely 
feudal sovereigns. Frequently, for a small present 
gain, they betrayed their more considerable inter- 
ests, by aiding feudalism,' their natural enemy, 
against the communes, their necessary allies. 

The new rights could not instantly produce the 
extreme consequences I mentioned just now ; but 
the first result was this. The quarrels and law- 
suits of seigniors against communes, that is, im- 
portant cases, where large interests were at stake, 
were carried directly before the royal tribunal. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO5 

The royal judges thus saw their jurisdiction ex- 
tended far beyond the royal domain ; and dwellers 
in cities, the richest, most active, and most en- 
lightened of the nation, became their clients in all 
communal cases. . 

Soon followed another innovation of great im- 
port ; this time, not from the people, but from the 
king. As a remarkable fact, it had, like the first 
change, its pretext and motive in an idea of equity, 
and, like the first, dealt with the forms of justice. 

The serfs and villeins, men free, but not noble, 
were judged in both civil and criminal cases by 
the seignior, or, rather, by an officer representing 
him. This officer usually bore the title of bailiff, 
and was almost always a very bad judge, answer- 
ing to none of the conditions which guarantee 
the integrity and impartiality of a magistrate.' 
He depended absolutely upon tho seignior, had 
made no especial study, held no rank, either by 
origin or knowledge, was a man born and bred in 
the neighborhood, having consequently relatives, 
allies, friends, and enemies ; and, finally, he was 
accountable only to the seignior, whose object was, 
by no means, to secure good ancl true justice for 
his serfs and villeins. If cases between subjects 
were ill-judged, how much more so were cases be- 
tween subject and seigniors 1 It is easy to* imag- 



I06 A SHORT HISTORY 

ine the reception which the claims of the serf 
met from the petty officer, who was all devotion 
to his lord. So it was very rare for the serf, who 
had been defrauded, or aggrieved by his seignior, 
to have recourse to the delusive justice of the 
bailiff. He choked down his wrath and hatred, 
and bore all in silence ; or, if a man of energy and 
resolution, he avenged himself, as best he might, 
then fled to the forest. He was always sure to 
find there a large band of energetic people, who, 
wronged like himself, had broken their bonds by 
some crime ; and he helped to increase this com- 
pany, which was perforce obliged to support life 
by theft and brigandage. 

One thing, of which people most vividly felt the 
need, was assuredly justice. You have seen, from 
what I have jiist said, how harshly the people of 
the middle ages were kept from it. They had 
been starving for justice for centuries, when the 
king, Philip Augustus, successor to Louis VII, 
created his grand bailiffs and grand seneschals. 



XIX. 



Until the reign of Philip Augustus, 'the kings 
had, in their domains, only bailiffs, sen.eschals; and 



OF. THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO7 

petty judges of no weight or dignit}'', who were put 
ill charge of each province, and were, in all respects, 
similar to the judges appointed by the seigniors. 
This, state of. things could not last. 'With the 
growth of royalty came new duties, for- which 
new instruments were necessary. " Philip Augustus 
created grand bailiffs and grand seneschals, who 
were, of course, very different personages from 
the old provincial judges. At first, the king chose 
for these duties the chief lords of the nobility, 
who held direct from him, giving them all the 
honor and power with which royalt^f could then 
invest its representatives ; these officers were fur- 
nished with a household train, sergeants at com- 
mand, and as much money as the king could sup- 
ply. Thus equipped, each started for his appointed 
province. Some went to communal cities, in vir- 
tue *of the new principle, that these cities held 
from the king, others to those strongholds which 
the king had bought on purpose from needy lords. 
Having these castles and cities for their general 
residence, part of their time was spent traveling 
from place .to place, throughout the province, to 
administer justice, — to the communes first ; that 
was an established fact; then, and this was an 
immense innovation, to each dependent of a 
seignior, who, having been previously sentenced 



roS A SHORT HISTORY 

by his lord, felt the decision unjust, and wished to 
appeal to the justice of the king ; a whole revo- 
lution lay within this system. 

At the -oewSj that there was in the land a man 
sent by the king to reform and set aside the de- 
cisions of the seigniors, in a word, to judge their 
judgments, the population started up and appealed 
from all sides. The seigniors were astonished and 
indignant, but none the less alarmed. The bailiff, 
that great personage, with his train, his band of 
sergeants, appeared, resolute to gain respect for 
the royal orders, and capable of forcing this re- 
spect from even the most powerful lords. Still 
some of the more violent dared an indirect ' resis- 
tance ; they maltreated, sometimes with extreme 
cruelty, those of their subjects who were so in- 
solent as to appeal. This was playing into the 
royal hands ; for the bailiffs instantly took the^field 
with their sergeants, seized, easily or forcibly, the 
castle of the recalcitrant lord, and confiscated his 
office until he made amends. Several seigniorial 
justices were thus suspended, some even perma- 
nently superseded. 

The machine by which royalty could undermine 
and. destroy its enemies was at last found, and, as 
time went on, the royal courts shattered, piece 
by piece, the feudal system. Our history is a full. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 



109 



confirmation of the political axiom, " Whoever has 
the judges on his side, will eventually have every- 
thing." 

The clergy, as we saw, suggested the truce of 
God, to restrain, as far as possible, the horrors of 
private warfare* Philip Augustus, with similar 
design, proposed the quarantaine, or fyrty days 
of the king. We must understand, that, whenever 
a noble had been insulted or aggrieved by an- 
other, he rarely failed to act in the honorable 
manner I am about to describe, ^e would mount 
his horse, and go any distance to attack soma 
relative of his foe, who^ having heard nothing of 
the quarrel-, was resting in unsuspicious peace. 
Our Saron had a fine chance against people taken 
thus unawares ; he could triumph without diffi- 
culty, and rob without resistance. The king de- 
creed that the offended party could not begin a 
war against the relatives of the offender until 
forty days after the dispute, so that those latter 
might have time to be warned, and prepare for 
defence. 

The reader must see the barbaric absurdity of 
those wars, which should at least have been lim- 
ited to the two contestants, without involving their 
kiiidred ; he must also see how little of knightly 
spirit there was among knights. 



no A SHORT HISTORY 



XX 



Saint Louis went even further than Philip Au- 
gustus, by giving to those who through fear, or any- 
other motive, were unwilling to engage in war, 
means to prevent the opposite party from waging 
it against them. They had, according to the terms 
of the statute, only to require surety from their ad- 
versary, that is, assurance of peace, and the lat- 
ter, also by the terms of the statute, could not 
refuse this assurance, if the former at the same 
time declared that they referred the settlement of 
the quarrel to the tribunal of the lord suzerain. 
Saint Louis also decreed the punishment of the 
gallows to any one refusing this assurance, and de- 
clared his statute binding, not only upon the royal 
states, but upon all the fiefs of France, in this 
overstepping his rights as suzerain. In his own 
states, he dared still more, forbidding purely and 
simply all private warfare ; but this was too much 
for that age, and he was not obeyed. Even a 
hundred years later, the kings were not strong 
enough to put an entire stop to these wars ^n 
their own domain : they did not try, but contented 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. Ill 

themselves with enforcing, as well as they could, 
the quarantaine of the king. 

Saint Louis also attacked the judicial duel. 
Other -ordeals, which we have noted, — ordeals by 
fire, water, &c., — had fallen almost wholly into des- 
uetude : people at last had come to realize that 
God did not always interfere, and command the 
elements to proclaim innocence ; but, strange to 
say, the judicial duel continued in full force. 
Whenever a case was involved in doubt, the judges 
avoided the difficulty by ordering a duel, nor was 
this duel allowed only to nobles. Plebeians asked 
and obtained it, first among themselves, then even 
against nobles, on condition that they should enter 
the lists armed with only a stick and a leather 
shield against the noble armed at all points and 
mounted on a great war-horse. In case a noble 
demanded the combat against a villein, he must 
fight on foot with the weapons of a villein. 

We must not be deluded into the idea that the 
two principals alone fought together ; they also 
fought with the witn^esses, whose testimony had 
annoyed them ; and to gain permission from the 
judges for this combat, they had but to accuse 
these witnesses of perjury, so that the latter could 
not be very eager to help justice, ' when, thereby, 
they risked their lives. It is. true they could 



112 A SHORT HISTORY 

and often did fight by proxy ; there were cham- 
pions ready to sell their services. 

The principals also fought with the tribunal : who- 
ever thought himself ill-judged was allowed to 
gwe the lie to the judgment, that is, challenge the 
judges, as false and faithless magistrates ; and, if 
the judges succumbed, one after another, it was 
granted that they had indeed given a wrong sen- 
tence ; the skilful pleader had won his case. 
This chilled all desire in the barons to,be judges ; 
for, warriors though they might.be, they did not 
care to have dangerous quarrels for the simple 
pleasure of doing service to the public, by filling 
an office, which was, in other respects, burden- 
some. 

Saint Louis abolished the duel in his states ; but 
even there, in his own land, he had to draw back. 
Under his successors, the duel was not absolutely 
forbidden; but permission had to be asked of the 
king, who sometimes granted it, so as not to ap- 
pear to prohibit the duel altogether. 



XXI.' n/ 

Philip the Handsome was really the .first mod- 
ern king, the first prince who had a full and en- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II3 

tire conviction of the illimitable rights of royal 
prerogative ; the first, too, who bore himself with 
majesty on every occasion where he found him- 
self strongest. It was not, perhaps, that he was 
more capable or more intelligent than his prede- 
cessors, nor that, with clearer eye, he pierced the 
future, and saw what was to be ; but a violent 
taste for despotism, a tyrant nature, took the place 
of this far-seeing vision ; and, besides, he never 
knew a conscience. Louis IX and Philip the 
Bold were scrupulous men, — Saint Louis, especially, 
— who allowed themselves to be impressed by old 
beliefs, and, in the face of the protestations of 
feudalism, asked themselves whether the rights 
claimed by the seigniors were not rights indeed. 
Philip the Handsome never .felt this kind of 
doubt. 

There was, in . the twelfth century, a sort of 
renaissance after so many barren ages ; poets and 
philosophers of real talent at last appeared, and a 
host of men began to study antiquity. Whilst 
some souls were absorbed in boundless admiration 
of Greek philosophy, others were enthusiastic over 
Roman law, which had continued the law of the 
southern provinces.' At the period of which I am' 
speaking, the study of Roman law had spread 
through all the provinces : in the districts gov- 



114 ^ SHORT HISTORY 

erned by common law, judges and lawyers com- 
paring the diversities and confusion of their stat- 
utes with the fine logical unity of the Koman 
(3ode, were seized with unanimous prejudice against 
their own, and unbounded predilection for the 

_, Roman law, which became, in their eyes, a model 
by which, gradually, to reform the established sys- 
tem. 

Now this old Eoman world, whose institutions 
were so much admired, had, at the last, been ruled 
by the absolute power of a single man. The em- 
peror became the living law. Consequently, all 
lawyers professed and propagated the idea, that 

I the king, representing the emperor in society, ought 
to be sole and absolute master of all, nobles as 
well as serfs, priests as well as laymen. ''As wills 
the king, so wills* the law,'^ became the maxim of 
all students and practitioners of. the* law. Feud- 
alism, already so hateful to the middle classes, to 
the people, saw roused against' it; a new class of 
men, learned, laborious, active, endowed with that 
inflexibility which comes from habits of logic, and 
animated by an aversion at once instinctive and 
reasoning. Royalty would naturally employ such 
men as judges, administrators, and agents. They 
were valuable by reason of their devotion, their 
superior knowledge, and tlie public respect for 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II5 

learning, which was then held in the highest es- 
teem. 

The royal seneschals and bailiffs, and the mem- 
bers of the parliaments, had originally been chosen, 
for the most part, from nobles and men of the 
sword. Under Philip the Handsome, this class al- 
most wholly disappeared from public office, and was 
replaced by lawyers. With these new-comers, le- 
gal warfare, warfare by means of decrees, which 
royalty had begun to issue against the seigniors, 
was continued with incomparable energy and rigor. 

At this moment in our history occurred a con- 
siderable revolution in the condition of the masses, 
a revolution of which we must here speak, although 
it was not a result of the movement we have just 
mentioned, -but rather developed beside it. 

There had been in all ages some enfranchise- 
ments, but they were few in proportion to the 
number of serfs, and did not diminish the general 
servitude ; for, while one serf would now ' and then 
be freed, diverse causes daily reduced freemen to 
bondage. In many places, the free immigrant would, 
within a certain time, find himself a serf; for who- 
ever through misfortune or fault became poor, un- 
less he developed into Bohemian or thief, must 
submit to servitude to gain support. The rank of 
journeyman did not exist ; a freeman could not 



Il6 A SHORT HISTORY 

live without land, for which he must apply to the 
seignior, who naturally granted it on the hardest 
terms, as a merchant sells at the highest price 
the food which is an actual necessity. 

In. the thirteenth century, there was a marked ten- 
dency among the seigniors to free the masses, 
the opinion having spread among them that it 
would be a good speculation, as indeed it was. 
The serfs, working not for their own profit, worked 
but feebly. It had taken centuries to reach this 
truth ; but, in the thirteenth century, they did at 
length reach it. Besides, this freedom was not 
given gratuitously, it was sold. To the quit- 
rents, which the freedman had henceforth to pay, 
to the taille which he still paid, to his tithes and 
corvees, was now added a special tax as the price 
of his liberty. . His gain, on the other hand, was 
the right to. save money, if he could, and bequeath 
it to his children ; to marry without asking leave ; 
and to give over his land to another, with this 
condition*well understood, that the grantee should 
be subject to all the duties of the grantor. If 
then the serf gained in being no longer tied to the 
soil, but free to go at his will, the seignior did 
not iQse much. 

The kings of France freed, in their domains, 
many more than the other seigniors. Finally, on 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II7 

the third of July, 1315, Louis the Quarrelsome 
freed all serfs by a statute, which is still fa- 
mous. This statute proves, beyond question, that 
the lords made this change, not from feelings of 
justice, unseljSsh humanity, or religion, but from 
i nterest an d calculation. Louis the Quarrelsome 
says, in his statute, that his agents had orders to 
treat with the serfs, on the conditions and price 
of their liberty. These conditions were, in some 
places, so heavy that the serfs preferred to remain 
as they were. Philip^ ..the-Xong, successor to 
Louis the Quarrelsome, tried to force them to 
buy their freedom. We find, in the records of 
the Parliament of Paris, papers authorizing the 
serfs to remain in servitude, as they had peti- 
tioned, so little profit could they reap from free- 
dom. 

However, whether the serfs chose to accept the 
offers made them, or were forced to it, this is 
certain : that, at the end of this century, servitude 
was very limited, and, in some provinces, had 
wholly disappeared. 

Where it still continued, it grew less and less 
with each century. It is injpossible to know ex- 
actly the proportion of serfs to free peasants in 
each age. In 1Y89, a few serfs still remained in 
in nearly every canton of France. 



Il8 A SHORT HISTORY 

On the. other hand, this was the time when the 
communes, having reached their highest p,oiDi^ji£ 
prosperity and independence, began visibly to der, 
cline. They had effected- -ag^mst feudalism, not 
all it was in their nature to do, but all that des- 
tiny committed to their charge ; they had weak- 
ened it much, disorganized and divided it. They 
were, in turn, to perish under the deadly weight 
of royalty. The royal power, whose right to jud^e 
and directly govern them they had recognized, was 
now at work applying to its own profit the final 
results of this dangerous principle, which it inter- 
preted against them, and so claimed a i^^7Ze, and 
the supervision of all municipal appointments. 
The royal bailiffs and seneschals, in fact, ruled 
all elections, and allowed or forbade^ at their will, 
all the deeds of the chosen magistrates. Nothing 
was done within the communes without, the con- 
sent of these too powerful personages. By the 
payment of tallies, the communes furnished the 
kings with just the means to keep this power 
and increase it by maintaining large bodies of ser- 
geants, who made resistance henceforth as useless 
for the communes as for the seigniors. Let the 
burgesses daily increase their hoards of wealth ; 
their toil was for the benefit of royalty, since they 
provided the money wherewith to pay the gov- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II9 

ernments and officers needed to reduce all to obe- 
dience. 

At the period we have now reached, the tri- 
umph of roj^alty over the nobility and people, 
though not complete, was assured ; the hardest 
battle was fought, the rest would in time be won. 
Doubtless, there must still be short intervals of re- 
action, momentary backward movements towards 
the re-establishment of feudalism, like that in the 
beginning of the reign of Louis the Quarrelsome ; 
but these were insignificant oscillations. The 
social body, irrevocably started upon the modern 
track, could not retrace its steps ; the right 
claimed by ' the king to be supreme and final 
master, was instilled in all hearts. . This idea had 
taken possession of the conscience, and that suf- 
ficed to secure the eventual triumph of royalty. 
Neither accident nor misfortune could avail against 
it. 

The very war with. England, that is, the war 
which the English kings waged against our sover- 
eigns to deprive them of the kingdom of France, 
that immense desolation of a hundred years, did 
not interrupt the course of events. One of our 
kings, Charles VII, could even sink, after the 
English victories, to the last stage of weakness *, 
royalty, none the less, continued, in principle. 



I20 A SHORT HISTORY 

the sovereign power to which all other must 
yield. The day after that in which we drove the 
English from the kingdom, Charles VII, who had 
long been called in derision the King of Bourges, 
found himself master of his land, in the face of 
his lords, as if nothing had happened Eoyalty 
had not lost one inch of ground ; and the feudal 
barons had to bow before it, whether they would 
or no, because its right had remained unques- 
tioned in the heart of the masses. So true is it 
that right, or what is believed right, always rules 
the world ! 



XXII. 



Charles VII did two things, which strengthened 
and organized the conquests of his predecessors, — 
he made the taille and the army permanent. 

With a standing army, the king had henceforth 

in his hand a power which was all his own, and 

which was always available for the subjection of 

• • • 

the nobles. Before, the army had been a meeting 

of nobles, gathered together at the appeal of the 

king to serve for a fixed time, as prescribed by 

the feudal laws. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 121 

This time having elapsed, the lords would dis- 
band, and return home ; and the army would thus 
be dissolved. Besides, this army, animated by the 
feudal spirit, was, naturally, quite unmanageable. " 
In case the king wished to put down the revolt 
of a great vassal, all the lesser seigniors depend- 
ent upon this chief, instead of enrolling them- - 
selves in the royal army, would join the vassal, 
and aid the revolt. Even those who followed the 
king were not generally earnest to win for him a 
complete victory ; they feared too great a tri- 
umph, seeing between themselves and the vassal ,/ 
a community of interests. So the feudal army was 
neither so useful nor so safe for the king as regu- 
lar troops, who were in his pay, and who, having left 
home and family forever, had no interest beyond 
that of the master who paid them. 

The standing army had the further effect of 
weakening the nobility. The more energetic and 
martial lords entered the army in the rank of 
officers. Once enrolled, they formed habits of 
passive obedience,' of devotion to their supreme 
head, their honor being staked on that fidelity, 
which, in all times, has been the soul of military 
bodies : the king could safely turn the arms of 
the nobles against their own caste or even their 
very families. Those lords who stayed in their 



122 A SHORT HISTORY 

castles were called to war only at long intervals, 
on those occasions when the regular troops were 
thought insufficient ; and, consequently, losing their 
warlike spirit, their taste for arms, and skill in 
combat, they became less defiant and bold. In 
the standing army, the art of war grew more and 
more perfect, as was natural ; for men learn 
quickly those things to which they devote them- 
selves with singleness of purpose, — those things 
of which they make a trade. Every time the lords 
were called to the feudal army, as happened occa- 
sionally until the reign of Louis XIV, the superior- 
ity of the regular troops over these home bands 
was found more striking, till the feudal army be- 
came an object of ridicule, and, under Louis XV, 
ceased to be convoked. 



XXIII. 



Francis I instituted the Goyrt, and this had a 
decisive influeiice upon the manners of the nobil- 
ity. Those lords, whose respect royalty had diffi- 
culty in keeping when they were at their castles, 
having come to court, prostrated themselves before 
the throne, and yielded obedience with their whole 
hearts. ^A few words will describe this Gourt. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 23 

The king lodged and fed in his own large pal- 
ace, which was fitted for the purpose, the flower 
of the French nobility. Some of these lords were 
in his service, under the title of officers of his 
household — as chamberlains, purveyors, equerries, 
&c. Large numbers of domestic offices were cre- 
ated solely as an excuse for their presence. Others 
lived there, without duties, simply as guests. 
All these, besides lodgjjag and food, had often 
a pension as well. A third class were given only 
a lodging, and provided their own table ; but all 
were amused and entertained with various pleas- 
ures, at the expense of the king. Balls, carousals, 
stately ceremonials, grand dinners, theatricals, con- 
versations inspired by the presence of fair women, 
constant intercourse of all kinds, where each could 
chose for himself, and where the refined and liter- 
ary found a place as well as the vain and profli- 
gate, — such was court life, a truly diff'erent thing 
from the monotonous and brutal existence of the 
feudal lord at his castle in the depths of tlie 
province. So,' from all sides, nobles flocked to 
court, to gratify both the most refined tastes and 
the most degraded passions. Some came ho- 
ping to make their fortune, a word from the king 
sufficing to enrich a man ; others came to gain a 
rank in the army, a lucrative post in the finance 



124 A SHORT HISTORY 

department, an abbey, or a bishopric. From the 
time kings held court, it became almost a law, 
that nothing should be granted to a nobleman who 
lived beyond its pale. Those lords who persisted 
in staying on their own estates were supposed to 
rail against the admistration, or, as we of the pres- 
ent would express it, to be in opposition. ''They 
must indeed be men of gross minds who are not 
tempted by the polish of the court ; at all events, it 
is very insolent in them to show so little wish to see 
their sovereign, and enjoy the honor of living under 
his roof.'^ Such was almost precisely the opinion of 
the king in regard to the provincial nobility ; it 
certainly was the opinion of Louis XIV. 

Ambition drew the nobles to court ; ambition^ 
society, and dissipation kept them there. To incur 
the displeasure of their master, and be exiled from 
court was, first, to lose all hope of advancement, 
and then to fall from paradise into purgatory. It 
killed some people. - 

But life was much more expensive at court than 
in the castles. As in all society where each is 
constantly in the presence of his neighbor, there 
was unbounded rivalry as to who should be most 
brilliant, most superb The old revenues did not 
suffice, while, at the same time, the inevitable re- 
sult of the absence of the lords was to decrease 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 25 

them. Whilst the expenses of the nobleman at 
Chambord or Versailles were steadily on the in- 
crease, his intendant, alone and unrestrained upon 
the estate, filled his own pockets, and sent less 
money every quarter, so that, to keep up the 
proper rank, the lord was forced to beg a pension 
from the king. Low indeed was the downfall of 
the old pride and feudal independence I 

The question was how to obtain these pensions, 
ranks, offices, and favors of all kinds. The virtues 
most prized and rewarded by the kings were not 
civic virtues, — capacity, and services of value for 
the public good ; what pleased them was, naturally, 
devotion to their person, blind obedience, flattery, 
and subservience. 

Throughout the middle ages, the loyal senti- 
ments of affection and admiration for the king had 
been the portion of the people, the middle classes, 
who, seeing the king only from afar, viewed him 
as their natural protector against the tyranny of 
the seigniors, and, with that feeling, always per- 
sisted in finding only good in all the faults of the 
government. The nobility had long been refrac- 
tory to these sentiments, as opposed to their in- 
terests ; but, after the creation of the court, aban- 
doning the idea of resisting the king for that of 
winning his favor, they changed their attitude and 



126 A SHORT HISTORY 

language, and joined the other classes, with more 
or less sincerity, in the worship of royalty. Then 
all united in raising their idol above the earth, 
far from common mortals, even to the very skies. 
The concert of voices was unanimous under Louis 
XIV ; he received the most intoxicating homage, 
which made him think himself a god, or, at least, 
a demigod. 



XXIV. 



We have seen the rise of feudalism ; we have 
seen it united in all its essential elements ; we 
have seen the steps by which royalty sprang up 
before its very face, and the weapons used to des- 
troy it : now we will see its dismemberment, bit 
by bit. The reader must recall those elements of 
'which we have spoken ; for our purpose is to 
show how each one became gradually weakened 
and finally annihilated. It must be said, in the 
first place, that the destruction of feudalism was 
not wholly complete until the Revolution consum- 
mated it. 

The taille. — We have seen that the lords levied 
an ordinary tax, — which was usually annual, — 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 127 

and au extraordinary tax, on certain grand speci- 
fied occasions ; — four in particular ; — hence the 
name of tax for four causes. It must be under- 
stood that this extraordinary tax was levied, not 
only upon the little domain depending directly on 
the seignior, but also upon other seigniories hold- 
ing from him ; in other words, the lord claimed 
the extraordinary tax from his own subjects and 
also from his vassals, who, of course, collected it 
from the people beneath them. When the kings 
put forward their claim to the sovereignty of all 
the domains of the kingdom, they consequently 
demanded the extraordinary tax from these do- 
mains ; and, from Saint Louis onwards, their 
claim having been established by force, they col- 
lected it everywhere. Only, the cause of a voy- 
age beyond the seas was replaced, in their sys- 
tem, by a more frequent cause, that of war. The 
kings levied this tax whenever they made war. 
Under Philip the Handsome, it was levied and 
paid nearly every year, for one reason or an- 
other. Doubtless, this did not prevent the lords 
from levying the ordinary tax, but it did prevent 
the peasants from paying it ; their money was ex- 
hausted. Besides, as the kings considered the 
royal impost of the first importance, they forbade 
the lords to demand any dues until their own had 



128 A SHORT HISTORY 

been paid ; the result was, that the barons either 
reduced their claims, or contented themselves with 
realiziug a small part of the imposed sum. 

Under Philip the Handsome appeared an insti- 
tution whose history is iutimately connected with 
that of taxes, and which, besides, played an im- 
portant part under the old system. I mean the 
States General, or assemblies of national deputies. 

The States General were convoked for the first 
time by Philip the Handsome, whom it pleased to 
rely upon national deputies for support in a dis- 
pute he had with the Pope. After him, they were 
convoked very irregularly and at long intervals, 
by different kings, whenever it seemed profitable 
to call in their aid, either to oppose turbulent 
nobles or to vote extraordinary taxes. Unless 
some pressing interest over-ruled every other sen- 
timent, the kings dreaded this assembly. That 
is why, from 1303, the date of the first States 
General, until 1189, a period of nearly five hun- 
dred years, this assembly was called only thirteen 
times ; at the fourteenth meeting of the States, in 
1789, they proclaimed themselves a national as- 
sembly, and began the Eevolution, thus proving 
that the kings had just cause for fear. 

At the present day, the assembly of deputies is 
held each year, and the members composing it are 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 29 

chosen directly by all Frenchmen who have reached 
majority. These deputies are considered equals, 
and each vote is counted ; they vote by heads. 

The de£u|JLes of the States General were divided 
into three oYders, or classes, as was the nation it- 
self. There were deputies of the nobility, of the 
clergy, and of the third estate, the middle class. 
They voted, not by heads, but by orders, so that 
the third estate, the oppressed class, had but one 
voice in the assembly, while the privileged classes 
had two. 

Let us return to the taxes. The war against 
the English gave rise to a multitude of taxes, and 
exhausted the country ; then, more than ever, the 
kings took from the peasants what little they had, 
leaving nothiilg for the lords. At the end of the 
war, Charles YII replaced the feudal army, which 
was composed of vassals, holding directly and in- 
directly from the king, by a body of regular, paid 
troojis, at the same time making the royal im- 
post annual, under the pretext of paying these 
troops. 

The seigniorial taxes still continued: the lords 
could levy them upon their own estates, without 
asking permission of the king ; but in regard to 
the amount of the tax and the manner of collect- 
ing it, the nobles were forced to conform more and 

9 



130 A SHORT HISTORY 

more to the custom of their province. The com- 
plaints and appeals of the taxed were no longer 
brought before a judge in the employ of the lord, 
but before parliarrients and royal judges. The 
latter, naturally hostile to the seigniors, kept a 
severe hold upon them to prevent their exacting 
more than their due ; and, when their claims 
seemed at all doubtful, gave a decision against 
them, so that at length the king or his agents in- 
directly authorized or forbade the lords to levy 
their taxes. This condition lasted until 1789, up 
to which time a number of seigniors still exacted 
a tax from their subjects. 

The corve^0_,weTe reduced even more than the 
seigniorial tax by the royal tribunals. A jurisdic- 
tion, very harsh towards the lords, was established ; 
those corvees were abolished which could not be 
proved by actual written title, neither the au- 
thority of habit nor the witness of the elders be- 
ing admitted. By this means, a multitude of cor- 
vees disappeared. Besides, all those which were 
not exactly specified, those, for example, impos- 
ing unlin^ited service upon the peasants, such as 
working upon the seigniorial estate at the will of 
the owner, or driving his horse whenever he took 
a journey, were fixed by the tribunals at a rea- 
sonable service. They forbade the lords to grant 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 13I 

or sell to any one else the hours of work due 
from their servants, whence it resulted, that the 
lords had no interest in exacting more than what 
was needed by themselves personally. Finally, the 
-eeigniors were made to feed horses and men dur- 
ing the hours of enforced labor ; and this discour- 
aged them from claiming service which was not 
indispensable. The corvee was everywhere of the 
lightest at the dawn of the Revolution ; still, it was 
abhorred by the people as a sign and pledge of 
the old servitude. 

Monopolies. — A royal statute, in the sixteenth 
century, abolished all that were not proven by 
title. Had this order been executed with rigor, 
monopolies would have been at an end, for scarce 
one was founded upon a written contract. The 
lords protested ; and the result was such as is 
common when a law is too severe, — the statute 
was enforced upon the petty, uninfluential nobles, 
and suspended for the more powerful ones. In 
1189, there were few domains where monopolies 
still existed. 

Customs became less and less numerous ; upon 
this point, as upon others, the royal tribunal ex- 
ercised a good influence by obliging the lord to 
prove, by title-deed, his right to duties. Unable 
to fulfill this condition, many seigniors had to re- 



132 A SHORT HISTORY 

sign their old feudal tributes. As for regular /;us- 
tom-houses, the courts regulate^ them, each court 
fixing the tkriif for . itS' own (district. Later, Louis 
XIV established ..a gen^jal^and uniform tariff, by a 
statute, which, like many others, was but irregu- 
larly followed. On the other side, it happened 
that the kings granted, to some lords, the privilege 
of exacting new tolls ; but as, in the sum total, 
more were abolished than created, there were, in 

]789, less than in the. middle ages. It must be 
# 
owned, that, even after the decrease effected by 

royal power, the customs were, in 1'789, too nu-, 
merous. Commerce could never have been fully de- 
veloped under this system. 

The right of layde and tonlieu, that is, the fee 
for a stand in the market, — those claims which 
the lords had upon the merchandise sold in mar- 
kets of the seigniory, — were still more reduced. 
The lords, besides, had to gain permission from 
the prince to levy them. In many places, the 
prince, under pretext of the uncertainty of the 
claim, took upon himself the charge of the market- 
place and the rights thereto pertaining. 



-^ ^ V • 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I33 



XXV 



We have said that royalty did not radically ex- 
tirpate feudalism, and have shown that something 
of it still legally existed, until the eve of the Revo- 
lution ; but its existence in customs and manners 
was very different from its position in law, the 
seigniors allowing themselves many liberties not 
established by statute. 

Up to the time of the Revolution, there were al- 
ways a number of lords living after the fashion 
of their ancestors of the eleventh century ; like 
brigands expresses their condition. In the do- 
mains of these nobles, all the abuses and excesses 
of the old feudalism continued, without a single 
exception, — private wars, illegal corvees and taxes, 
constant robbery of the peasants, every possible 
fibuse, even to the usurped right of coining money, 
and false money at that. Under Louis XIV, when 
royalty was at the climax of its power, it would 
be easy to name one hundred gentlemen who were 
greedy brigands, living at the expense of their 
vassals, maltreating and assassinating all who 
dared resist them. We cannot enter into the 



134 "^ SHORT HISTORY 

details of this subject ; but, that the reader may 
form au idea of the disorders possible under this 
most absolute of monarchs, we will say a few 
words about the grand days of Auvergne, held in 
1^65. 

This tribunal, which was composed of members 
o^ the Parliament of Paris, who were sent to Cler- 
mont to hold_.cjpLurt--4ip.on Jhose. crimes of the seig^ 
iors_, which had passed the limits of the royal pa- 
tience, had, at least, thirteen thousand criminal 
cases to decide. In One audience, they pronounced 
sentence of death upon fifty-three lords. From 
these figures, we can estimate the sad condition 
of the people of this province under the tyranny 
of these provincial seigniors. 

This feudal anarchy, which was to be found only 
in a limited number of districts during peaceful 
and comparatively settled times, appeared and en- 
gulfed every thing when the royal power was in 
trouble and the public peace disturbed ; for the 
larger part of the nobles always cherished, in the 
depths of their hearts, a traditional scorn of law 
and a -belief that the peasants ought to belong to 
them body and soul. 

The reader will perhaps ask why royalty, with 
so many tribunals and agents, could not prevent 
this multiplicity of crimes. He will be still more 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I35 

surprised to hear that those condemned in the 
grand days of Auvergne were executed only in 
effigy, and that the severity of the judges seemed 
meant only to delude the people. A year after all 
this tumult and parade of justice, the condemned 
lords had returned to their homes and to their^ 
abuse of the peasants, as if nothing had happened. 
To explain this tolerance, we must remember what 
the ancient j'eg'me was. 

Notjone^ of the rulers of the period, whether 
minister or king, had-a-By-^ear- idea , of law, what 
it should be and the firmness it should show. No 
one in the government was capable of understand- 
ing, that, a measure once adopted or a sentence 
once passed, justice must take its course unmoved, 
without regard to the rank or quality of the indi- 
vidual. On the contrary, rulers were always in- 
fluenced by the condition of the man, by his for- 
tune, the splendor of his name, the standing of 
his family ; and they never rigorously executed the 
law upon those who had any of these claims to 
consideration. To apply the law to all equally, 
would have seemed an act subversive and even 
revolutionary in its bearing. Such was indeed the 
efifect produced by Richelieu in his attempt to 
make noble and plebeian alike subject to the same 
impassive justice. 



136 A SHORT HISTORY 

Furthermore, it often happened, that a king, re- 
garding no consideration, would or^ier the punish- 
ment of some powerful criminal, and yet, in spite 
of the king, he would go unpunished, because the 
royal agents could not, like their masters, rise su- 
pefitiT'tcr" the overwhelming influence then exer- 
cised by certain ranks. Thus caught between the 
hammer and auvil, the only thing they could do 
to satisfy their master and save their own credit 
was to go through the form of execution. Besides, 
there was little that was lastiug in the judicial se- 
verity of kings. Nobles won the princely favor 
by the aid of friends and relatives, or, as the kiug 
could not be omnipresent, by means of his repre- 
sentatives, governors of the province, intendants, 
judges, &c., whom they either bribed or intimi- 
dated. Impunity being always possible, and, in 
fact, probable, they were encouraged to multiply 
their crimes. Whoever had, near or far, among 
his family or friends, an influential protector, could 
risk his head to gratify his passions with eighty 
chances out of a hundred in favor of his losing 
nothing by it. 

It must also be considered that the royal officers^ 
of justice frequently bore within themselves^ that 
spirit of violence and iniquity so common among 
the upper classes. The administrative documents 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 137 

of that day show that the royal emissaries, in 
many places, tyrannized over the people with the 
same criminal fierceness displayed by the lords. A 
nuniber of judges in the parliaments and presiden- 
cies, so their contemporaries attest, had a repu- 
tation for venality and corruptness, which was well 
founded. Such persons naturalJy fell an easy prey 
to the rich man, who sought to evade justice. 
Besides, materiaX-Xonditions were very different 
from those- of the France of to-day ; justice could 
not take a smooth course in^ a land where roads 
were scarce, where traveling was difficult, where 
news circulated slowly, and where were no jour- 
nals nor publicity of any kind. Much more readily 
than now, could a crime be hidden or the report 
of it limited to its own little neighborhood. 

We must remember that many lords still lived 
in. their, old castles in places which were very re- 
mote and difficult of access, and, at the slightest 
threat, entrenched themselves there with a little 
band of outlaws. To execute the sentence hurled 
against these lords by the judges, the bailiffs must 
have been reinforced by a battalion, and have be- 
seiged the place, with a sacrifice of. many soldiers. 
The governor, or intendant recoiled from this expe- 
dition so much the more, that, one having been ac- 
complished, fifty would still remain to be undertaken 



138 A SHORT HISTORY 

in the province ; a small army would have been 
necessary. 

So royalty attacked and weakened the lords, 
but did not altogether destroy them, and, we may 
add, was powerless to destroy them. The security 
and order won for France by the Revolution, 
could not be gained by the kings for many rea- 
sons, of which the best is that these kings were 
absolute, and, with absolute monarchs there is 
never regularity, uniformity, constancy, or univer- 
sality, either in the laws or in their execution, 
and, without these, order and security are impos- 
sible. The reader will understand my meaning 
better presently. 



XXVI. 



We have seen how royalty rose and spread, and 
how it contracted feudalism into more and more 
narrow bounds ; we will now show absolute roy- 
alty in its full development, and the excesses with 
which it replaced the excesses of the system it 
had conquered ; in other words, the new evils foi; 
which the people exchanged their former sufferings. 

We are going to sljow, at one stroke, and with- 



• 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I39 

out noting the secondary variations, for which we 
have no room, — we are, I say, going to show 
the old systeni as it was from Francis I to Louis 
XIV, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 
First, at the summit of society, an absolute 
king to whom every thing in the kingdom belonged, 
both men and property. This king was supposed 
to represent God on earth. Should he abuse his 



power, God, perhaps, would punish him in an- 
other world ; but here, in this world, the king owed 
account to no one. Innumerable disorders and 
excesses of all kinds naturally flowed from this 
monstrous error. 

Wherever the will of the king is the law, there 
is no actual law, since law really is one common 
duty imposed, without exception, upon all citizens 
as being equal among themselves. In an absolute 
monarchy, the king, at his caprice, declares this 
thing or that a duty ; he makes the duty, so it is 
only natural that, having imposed it, he should also 
dispense with it, as seems good to him. He also nat- 
urally exempts those persons who execute his orders, 
or who are distinguished by his favor ; hence there 
is soon a whole class placed beyond the control 
of common obligations. As the king has freed his 
ministers and ^vgrites, from the rule of law, they, 
in turn, imitating his example, exempt their own 



140 A SHORT HISTORY 

a^nts ari(L favorites. Gradually, all who share, 
however little, in the government, evade the law, 
which then seems created solely for the lower 
classes, who are without fortune and without 
credit, and even by them it is scorned. Each 
seeks to elude it, so far as he can without dan- 
ger. When we carefully examine the old regime, 
we see that the royal statutes were always irreg- 
ularly executed, were observed by one and not 
by another, were applied here and ignored there ; 
no regularity, no equality, no consistency. 

The king, again, believing himself justice incar- 
nate, held himself above the judgment of tribunals, 
and respected the sentences of the court no more 
than the laws of the kingdom, punishing, at his 
pleasure, those whom the tribunal acquitted, or 
pardoning those it condemned. The intendants, 
governors, and officers, who represented the king 
in the provinces, following where he led, held 
themselves above justice, and claimed this immu- 
nity, not only for themselves, but for their rela- 
tions, their allies and friends ; and generally, by 
their high rank, discouraged the severity of the 
judges, so that punishment, like law, seemed 
made only for the common herd. 

Whoever was an agent in power, or sustained 
by an agent, or thought himself sure of being so 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I4I 

sustained, on account of his birth or fortune, — 
and this class was by no means small, — not be- 
ing restrained by the fear of certain retribution, 
easily allowed himself to infringe the law, and 
even the common principles of honesty. 

The hope of impunity is too strong a tempta- 
tion ; it always degrades in time. Those who, 
having no credit nor power, cannot cherish this 
hope, learn to scorn justice, since it is so unjust, 
and thus lose one of the chief reasons a man has for 
remaining honest. We see that absolute power 
is a general cause of depravity. This explains 
the almost universal dishonesty which the officials 
of the ancient regime brought to the exercise of 
their duties. Without this dishonesty, it would 
be impossible to account for the extreme misery 
of the people ; the burdens imposed by royalty 
upon its subjects were, no doubt, excessive, but 
still were not large enough to impoverish as they 
did, had they not been considerably aggravated 
by the functionaries. 

Under an absolute king, all the agents in power, 
from the ministers to the lowest clerks, are abso- 
Ijifej^ and_alJ-violate the rights of individuals, and 
play the tyrant, having little cause to fear that 
complaints against them will be heard. The mau 
who complains of an inferior to a superior agent. 



142 • A SHORT HISTORY 

is not noticed, because the superior sees in tJiis com- 
plaint a spirit of resistance and criticism, which 
may, in time, attack himself; so he hastens to crush 
it. On the same principle, the inferior officer is 
zealous to execute the arbitrary commands of his 
superior, and to. aid his despotism, knowing that, if 
the tyrannous will above him yields, he too must 
give up his own petty tyranny; and. that no man 
willingly resigns. Under a just government, where 
the prince does not recognize in his subjects 
rights limitable only by his own power, this never 
has been seen, and never will be; it would be a 
contradiction. 

No law, no justice, in the strict sense of the word ; 
these are the first inevitable fruits of absolute power. 

A man who can do what he wills is not likely 
to be wise ; certainly not for a long time, human 
wisdom being little but the forced return of a 
man upon himself when he has met the resistance 
of others. He who meets no resistance soon ceases 
to recognize the limitations of justice and reason. 
As soon as our kings were absolute, they planned 
and attempted, in the political world, all sorts of 
useless and foolish enterprises by which they ex- 
hausted the blood and wealth of France, except 
at certain periods, when all-powerful ministers 
like Richelieu and Mazarin forced the kings to 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 



143 



ajtnore-sensible policy. Charles VIII, Louis VII, 
and Francis I had a mania for conquering- all or 
g^ of__Italy, simply because this country charmed 
them with its climate, its artistic civilization, 
its brilliancy and ease of manners. We must con- 
fess that all the French nobility shared this in- 
fatuation ; but the kings might have opposed it, 
vt'hereas they encouraged and increased it. Fran- 
cis I, especially, wished to be emperor of Ger- 
many, which put France at enmity with the house 
of Austria, then represented by Charles V, who 
was king of Spain, of the Low Countries, and of 
a part of Italy, master of a vast empire in Amer- 
ica, and, finally, emperor of Germany, and who 
very nearly overwhelmed France with his superior 
forces : the kingdom, in this war, narrowly escaped 
losing some of its provinces. 

The civil wars between Protestants and Catho- 
Uesys which broke forth under the grandson of 
Francis I, suspended for nearly a century all great 
undertakings by. our kings against neighboring 
princes. But, as soon as this outburst was 
calmed, and our kings had leisure to ponder anew 
upon what they called political designs, these 
greg-t wars were resumed. Louis XIV wished to 
take Belgium from Spain ; then to conquer the 
people of Holland, who would have none of us ; 



144 ^ SHORT HISTORY 

and, finally, to put npon the throne of Spain one 
of his grandsons, of which surely France had ao 
hope. This unreasonable ambition caused a coali- 
tion of all Europe against France ; and our coun- 
try ran a serious risk of dismemberment, being 
saved only by some lucky accidents on which no 
one could have counted. It was not, however, 
saved from poverty. 

The kingdom was, for a long time, exhausted 
both of men and money ; and the population suf- 
fered untold misery. There were famines, like 
those of the middle ages. Peasants were reduced 
to living on roots and herbs, either raw or boiled. 
A frightful bread, made of all sorts of things ex- 
cept wheat, became an aristocratic and fashionable 
food. This result had the fine policy of the grand 
monarch won for France. 

That of Louis XV had not even a fixed and 
plausible motive. He engaged in two long and 
disastrous wars, one against Prussia, for Austria, 
the other against Austria, for Prussia ; and these in 
hopes of some minor territorial advantages, — a 
few cities any thing but indispensible to us, — and 
also for that vague and fantastic advantage called 
preponderance. This time we lost only the greater 
part of our colonies in America and India, besides 
of course, much money and many men, which was 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I45 

a matter of indifference, doubtless, in a oountry 
already ruined by Louis ZJV, where the peasant 
had neither the certainty of food or clothing, nor 
even a decent thatch upon his little hut, — where 
agricuUiire had wholly failed beforehand, and. 
where, for want of laborers, vast spaces remained 
marshes and fallow land. 

The richest nation in the world would have 
become incapable of Supplying an absolute mon- 
arch, with all the money he wanted; for human 
nature is insatiable. Large as may be the re- 
sources of a country, the expenses of a prince 
whose course, nothing stays are always larger. 
And then, in his imprudent greed, he drains the 
savings of his people, who, without means to 
make a fresh start, cannot renew their wealth. 
To profusion is added disorder and squandering. 
What we see in the house of a careless spend- 
thrift, befalls the nation, on a large scale. We 
have had very few kings who were, I do not say 
economical, but reasonable, in their expenditures, 
which, always disproportioned, changed only in 
nature from reign to reign according to the char- 
acter of each king. Louis XIV, in his part of 
grand monarch, united all kinds of expenses — 
wars, feasts, the pomp of dramatic entertainments, 
the building of palaces, &c. 

10 



146 A. SHORT 'HISTORY 

The kings, besides, had always, in the nobles 
of ■ the court, a wonderful help in exhausting the 
national treasury ; entertainments, pensions, grants, 
gifts to princes, dukes, counts, &c., formed one 
of the most respectable chapters of the daily bud- 
get. The taxes were often devoured one, two, or 
even three years in advance. The history of 
France shows, beyond question, that absolute mon- 
archs are always poor, and that, amid all their 
magnificence, they live always under constraint 
and by means of expedients, in which we shall 
find another cause of misery to their subjects. 



u 



X X V 1 1. 



A SHORT examination of the system of taxation 
under the old regime will justify the criticisms we 
have made. 

The principal taxes, which are all we shall men- 
tion, were the tgjlle or land-tax, oAde^ or wine- 
tax, doua7ies or customs, and ggiielle or salt-tax. 

Tjie taille, answering to bur manor-tax, was the 
tax upon real estate, aiid fell upon only one-third 
of the inhabitants ; nobles, priests, and govern- 
ment officials of all ranks were exempt, and found 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I47 

means to -have their tenants exempt, so that the 
burden, which would have been light if divided 
among all, crushed with its weight the class in. 
question; so much the more that this class was 
composed of poor and struggling laborers. The 
amount of the taille was fixed each year for all 
France, and divided among the provinces by the 
royal council, which named whatever sum it chose. 
No tax-payer could foresee one year, what would 
be required the next ; neither his consent nor 
opinion was asked ; in short, the taille was an 
arbitrary tax. 

Each intend ant divided the amount of the taille 
imposed upon his province, among all the parishes ; 
and, finally, in each parish, the taille was assessed 
among the inhabitants by collectors. 

The collector was not a functionary like the 
tax-gatherer of to-day ; each inhabitant- took his 
turn in filling* the ofiSce, so that the collector was 
often a coarse peasant, who could neither read 
nor write. 

To appreciate his embarrassment, we must con- 
sider that there were then no registers nor any 
exact means of valuing the different estates ; and 
tho collector was responsible for the amount of 
the tax, being called ijpon to supply all defi- 
ciencies, so that it was for his interest to overtax 



148 A SHORT HISTORY 

the more solvent peasants*--, I say peasants, be- 
cause the collector, however eager he might be to 
do it, dared not tax the rich middle class heavily, 
lest it should obtain exemption from the intendant. 
Next to the better class of peasants, the people 
most highly assessed by the collector were his 
enemies, who were sure to take revenge when they 
in turn became collectors. 

So the common policy among the peasants, in 
order to escape a heavy tax, was " to pretend ex- 
treme poverty, and make as little show of weaTth 
as possible. This led to most disastrous con- 
sequences ; they employed a most limited . num- 
ber of cattle, and made no improvement on their 
. larfd. Had cattle been offered to a peasant, he 
•would have refused them ; and it must be owned 
that this was reasonable, with collectors and in- 
tendants on the watch for the least sign of prop- 
erty, that they might increase the taide. 

Another means, universally employed, was to 
pay only cent by cent, and that under compul- 
sion, in order to disgust collectors in future. A 
writer of that day, Bois Guillebort, has drawn a 
striking picture of the collection of the iaille in 
the villages. " The collectors,'' he. says (there 
were generally several), " meet at the inn, to de- 
cide the sura to be assessed to each inhabitant, 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I49 

and sometimes spend three months without coming 
to an agreement. The schedule being at length 
finished, they start out to collect the money, go- 
ing all together, as they are in danger of receiv- 
ing insults, or even worse treatment. 

" Whilst these seven or eight functionaries pass 
through the street, rousing, on their way, a tu- 
mult of screams and curses, the collectors of the 
previous year, who have not yet finished the ever 
difiicult collection of their sum, are doing the 
same, — both receiving only insults. Meantime, 
the intendant becomes impatient, .and sends a file 
of bailiffs and sergeants ; but matters are not yet 
serious. The bailiffs are bribed, the sergeants 
plied with drink ; and they leave without hurting 
any one, only to repeat this performance five or 
six times, which is no slight expense to the vil- 
lage. But at length the time comes when the in- 
tendant can be kept waiting no longer. The 
bailiffs return for the seventh and last time, and 
seize all the cattle in the village, without concern as 
to who has paid and who has not ; for the inhabi- 
tants are responsible as a whole. Then follows 
weeping and gnashing of teeth. The cattle belong- 
ing to the poor farmers are sold ; and, if these do 
not sufiice, the wretched furniture is taken, even the 
doors and shutters are unhung, the house itself 



150 A SHORT HISTORY 

perhaps is torn to pieces, and the bricks and 
beams sold. You hear and see nothitjg but women 
crying and lamenting. With all this, something 
is still lacking to complete the sum of the taille. 
The bailiffs seize the collectors, and drag them to 
prison in the city. The village must then pay for 
the support of these collectors in their prison, from 
which they emerge some months later, out of 
health and ruined." 

The next year, it was the turn of others to go 
through the same trials to reach the same result. 
''It is thus," says Turgot, " that every well-to- 
do family in the village is in turn reduced to 
want.'' 

Notice the baneful round. The tax, in that it 
was too heavy and irregularly "distributed, — in 
that it was aggravated, first by the enormous ex- 
pense of collection, and then by the seizures which 
were its result, and which, being executed* like a 
sort of pillage, destroyed property of considerable 
value, — this tax, I say, each year caused the ruin 
of a large number of people, — each year increased 
the proportion of insolvents and reduced that of 
men able to pay ; and, consequently, each year 
prepared, for the following, more expense, more 
loss, and more ruin. The old regime was moving 
on to a frightful catastrophe. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I51 

tn the latter centuries of the monarchy, the name 
of aides wsLS given to the tax levied upon wine sold 
at retail. This tax amounted to a quarter or even 
a third of the price of the wine, — five to seven 
cents, for instance, on a bottle worth twenty cents ; 
— but it must be added, that other claims also 
weighed upon this merchandise, notably the city 
claims on wine sold within the city limits ; and 
it was rarely sold at retail elsewhere, for reasons 
we shall see presently. The tax and the city claim 
together often equalled the .whole first cost ; so a 
retail dealer had to sell a bottle of wine worth 
twenty c^nts for forty, or lose money. In fact, 
he charged a much higher rate, for this reason. 
The collectors of aides had a right to draw up the 
verbal process, which was always* accepted by the 
judges ; and they had a motive for making as 
ma.ny of these as possible, since a third of the fines 
became theirs. So, at any moment of the day, they 
visited the wine-cellars to see what had been sold. 
The least suspicion of fraud was distorted by them 
into certainty ; and, indeed, the merchants did 
generally cheat, as always happens when burdens 
are too severe. The collectors thus held all wine- 
sellers under their control, through the excess of 
their powers and the very dishonesty of the dcal-^ 
ers. They abused their position, first, to ruin all 



152' A SrfORT HISTORY 

sale in the villages, where they found it hard- to 
keep a watch ; then, to reduce to a very small 
nuraber the hostelries or inns in cities, granting 
existence to these only on one condition, that 
they, the collectors, should furnish the wine. They 
were quite willing to carry on this trade, buying, 
at good bargains, from the owners of vineyards, 
and selling again, with large profits, to the poor 
innkeepers, " who found themselves wholly over- 
ruled ; hence it. resulted, that, in the cities, wine 
became horribly dear, far above the price that 
workingmen could pay, and not wine alone, but 
all other provisions, the landlords giving the ex- 
cuse, that, as they lost money on wine, they must 
make it up in other things. In the country, the 
only man who • drank wine was the owner of a 
vineyard. . The traveler might journey over seven 
or eight leagues of highway without means to 
quench his thirst unless by water from the brook. 
The exorbitant price of wine leads me naturally 
to another tax well fitted to aggravate it, and to 
make all other merchandise high in proportion. I 
mean the douanes, or customs. Now, we have all 
around our country a line of custom-houses, which 
receive certain duties upon exports and imports. 
The duties go to the State ; but the State, in 
maintaining these custom-houses, has in view, not 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. i;J3 

SO. much the profit from the duty itself aa a cer- 
tain economical result. When a duty is levied 
upon foreign goods entering our provinces, it 13 
to bring their price to a level with that of home 
manufactures of the same kind, so that the foreign 
merchant may not undersell native tradesmen, and 
rob them of customers. This is a false principle ; 
but, whether or no, it is the principle which pre- 
vents, the abolition of custom-houses. Well, for- 
merly these custom-houses, which are now limited 
to the coasts and frontiers, were established in the 
interior, on the borders of every province, making 
of each a sort of foreign country as regarded its 
neighbor, except, it njust be added, Normandy, 
Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, Berry, Anjon, and 
Maine, — which, in 1664, formed, in this respect, 
one and the same district, all having a single line 
of custom-houses. So a duty had to be paid on 
merchandise going from one province to another, 
— on one side, an' export, on the other, an im- 
port duty ; and this must be paid as many times 
as the goods crossed the boundary. These duties 
were considerable ; but. Averse still, the custom- 
officers wielded their powers with the bad faith 
and arbitrary will habitual to government officials 
under the ancient regime. They had one singular 
fashion: instead of fixing the duty themselves, 



154 ^ SHORT HISTORY 

they forced the merchants to declare, in writing, 
the quality, quantity, weight, and measure of their 
goods, and tfien calculate the sum they, the mer- 
chants, must pay. If the latter were guilty of a 
mistake in this calculation, the oflScers made it an 
excuse for confiscating the goods, under plea of 
fraud ; it was simply to obtain this excuse that 
the truly remarkable practice was instituted. 

We must recall here, that the roads were gen- 
erally barred at certain distances by order of 
the lords, the masters of the- soil, against all 
passers, and that the traveler, to have the bar re- 
moved, must pay a fee to the seigniorial agents. 
These tolls were still quite numerous in the 
eighteenth century; there was hardly a bridge 
of any size, or even a ferryboat on the river 
banks, which had not its toll. We saw just now ■ 
that inns were very expensive ; on the other 
hand, roads were few and bad. Transportation 
wa^ carried on with discouraging slowness, and 
often with much damage and the loss of horses. 
So it happened that the wine of Touraine, sold at 
two cents a pint to the merchant, was worth twenty 
cents a pint after he had traveled forty leagues ; 
and, even then, in selling it at ten times its first 
cost, he gained no profit, to say nothing of the 
risks and annoyances to which he was subjected 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 155- 

by the admistration through the whole length of 
his journey. It needed courage to attempt com- 
merce in those days. 

Of all the taxes, the. gabelle was most detested, 
and well deserved so to be. The gabelle was the 
tax on salt, or, to speak more accurately, a tax with 
salt as the medium. The State alone had a right 
to sell it ; alone possessed salt-factories. Naturally, 
the State sold it at a price above its worth ; but 
this was not all : had it been, the people would 
have submitted with patience ; but the State forced 
each subject to buy a fixed amount. ' This amount 
varied in different provinces, as did also the price ; 
and there were even some provinces which did 
not pay this tax at all. We shall presently -see 
the result of this diversity. So each man was 
obliged to go to the State magazines, and buy the 
quantity of salt assessed to him whether he needed 
it or not. He received, at the same time, a ticket 
called gabelement. This salt was called sel de de- 
voir, and, curious to relate, had to be kept for 
daily consumption : it could not be used for salt- 
ing down ; another supply must be bought for 
that, even though the purchaser had already more 
than he could use. 

It resulted from all this, that, as the price of 
salt varied much in different places, and was 



156 A SHORT HISTORY 

everywhere dear beyond reason, there was a great 
profit in selling contraband salt, or in buying sel 
de devoir from particular people, in places where 
it cost leasts and transporting it where it was 
most expensive. Of course this was prohibited, 
and called salt-smuggling,^ .hwt, in spite of that, a 
large number of men devoted themselves to this 
industry, and, in certain cantons, the larger part 
of the peasantry deserted agriculture for salt-smug- 
gMng. Even priests and soldiers were implicated ; 
and thus the mal-administration of the time, by 
making laws which all were tempted to break, and 
which a great number did break, caused political 
depravity among the people. 

The profit accruing from this smuggling multi- 
plied the frauds so excessively, that their frequency 
and the difficulty of suppressing them led to an 
atrocious penalty. The salt-smuggler was sen- 
tenced to a heavy, fine for the first offence, pun- 
ished with the galleys for a second, or, if he were 
armed and belonged to a union, he was condemned 
to the galleys for his first offence, and hung for 
his second ; aud this latter often happer.ed. There 
were three thousand five hundred imprisonments 
and fifteen hundred sentences to severe or capital 
punishments every year, for salt-smuggling. There 
were executed in France seven or eight or even 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 57 

ten times as many salt- smugglers as assassins, in 
the same time. The gabelle had a regular army 
of guards and soldiers ; and, putting together all 
the spaces over which watch had to be kept in the 
provinces, we find the gabelle had to guard twelve 
hundred leagues of barrier. 

The search for smugglers was an excellent pre- 
text for annoying the subjects in a thousand ways. 
The spies appeared unexpectedly in villages, en- 
tered houses, and demanded the salt-tickets. Woe 
to him who had mislaid his ! he was a smuggler, 
and treated as such. Having received the ticket, 
they would compare it with the salt in the bin. 
If the salt was gone, or if only a little remained, 
they forced the' purchase of a new supply. If 
there- was a full supply, or nearly so, it was evi- 
dently contraband salt; then followed an action 
and fine. Between too much and not enough of 
the terrible article, there was but one line, which 
the commissioner fixed according to his fancy 
]f salt was wanted in large quantities for a special 
purpose, one was not at all sure of being able to 
pet it Just before, he was forced to have too 
much; now, it- was refused him, there being a 
doubt whether he might not want it to sell under- 
hand to the smugglers. 

This fine administration executed four thousand 



158 A SHORT HISTORY 

household seizures in a year ; and, on its twelve 
hundred leagues of internal frontiers, made con- 
stant war upon the salt-smugglers, or struggled 
with the peasants. Never had fiscal absurdity 
reached such a height. 



XXVIII. 

We must say a few words about the adminis- 
trations in charge of the collection of taxes. The 
taille was under government ; that is, was dis- 
tributed and levied by functionaries appointed to 
the post for life or for a certain time — the same 
system now in practice for all general taxes. The 
gabelle, customs, and wine- tax were leased, as the 
city tax is now in some places. The taxes were 
put up at auction ; and the highest bidders, — for 
it was not a business that one alone could under- 
take, — obtained, in return for the sum they of- 
fered, a right to collect -these taxes, whose amount 
was naturally uncertain, and to keep for their own 
benefit whatever was in excess of the sum pledged. 

So forty or fifty of the richest financiers would 
form a company to buy together the lease of the 
three indirect taxes. They had the wit to admit 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 159 

into their association a certain number of poorer 
comrades, chosen from among the magistrates and 
members of parliament ; they thus obtained an in- 
terested support from the class wielding the chief 
power. They also took care, before the bidding 
at the auction, to bribe the princes and great lords 
in favor with the king, and the officers in charge 
of the sale. Having thus gained to- their side all 
who might warn the king, or guard the interests 
of royalty, they obtained the taxes at a very low 
price. They then raised a regular army of em- 
ployees, superiors and subalterns, whom they 
scattered over the country to levy the contribu- 
tions. The government was supposed to have 
given the farmers, as they were called, an exact 
schedule of the sums to be assessed ; but, in point 
of fact, this schedule was very inexact, and, in 
any case, there was no one to see that it wa3 re- 
spected. The functionaries were bribed, the judges 
were accomplices, or else bound by family ties 
or the brotherliood of one profession to those judges 
who were accomplices. The farmers of the royal 
revenues were thus able to tax the country with 
impunity. All the agents, from first to last, were 
filled with this idea of impunity ; their chiefs, on 
the other hand, having in view, not .good govern- 
ment, but large profits, required only the largest 



l6o A SHORT HISTORY 

possible returns, prizing in them nothing but this 
form of talent. * 

• Under these conditions, the agents were of neces- 
sity dishonest, faithless to the public, meddlesome, 
and violent. The farm extolled from its subjects 
five or six times more than its due ; so, having 
bought the tax very low, it gained on both sides. 
For every crown which the farm paid to the gov- 
ernment, it took ten from the public. 

The question is how so flagrant an abuse could 
long exist; for, while it was for the interest of 
the subject not to be despoiled, it was also for 
the interest of the government to receive the tax 
into the treasury, and not lot it fall into the • hands 
of agents ; but it must be remembered, that the 
government was then, in a condition which made 
it dependent upon the financiers. At the present 
day, a government spends only in proportion to 
the taxes received, supporting itself each year upon 
the revenues of that year, or nearly so. The gov- 
ernment then begged of its farmers an advance 
of the revenues for one, two, or three years, and 
absorbed them all, thus living upon future income 
advanced by the farm. Should this system of 
farming be abolished and the tax put under gov- 
ernment, three, four, or even . more . years must 
elapse before a cent of these taxes could be 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. l6l 

touched. The disorder and prodigality common 
to absolute power had put t^is power at the mercy 
of the financiers, and these financiers gave France 
over to plunder. 

And then, as we said, the financiers were very 
strong, — strong in the purchased support of court- 
iers, of the chief administrator, and of the magis- 
trates. Had a king wished to change this detest- 
able system of taxation, he would have been in- 
stantly deafened by the appeals and complaints 
of those most nearly surrounding him, even in his 
very palace ; his existence would have been made 
unbearable. This king must have possessed a ter- 
rible energy for good. Such a character is rarely 
found among absolute monarchs, certainly not 
among ours. Louis XVI, the best intentioned of 
our kings, abolished the corvees and corporations 
for eighteen months or two years, and then re- 
established them. This was the best proof that 
could be given, that reform could come only 
through the Revolution. 



XXIX 



CoEVEES were required from the peasants for the 
king as well as for the lords ; the latter claim had 

11 



l62 A SI^DRT HISTORY 

in time grown lighter, but the former, on the con- 
trary, became daily heavier and more exacting. 
The intendants used and abused the peasants in 
divers tasks. Did -they wish to open or repair a 
highway, they called upon the peasants, who rarely 
traveled themselves ; did they wish to build bar- 
racks or magazines, the peasants must come; ,. did 
a regiment change its quarters, the peasants must 
carry the luggage ; were there criminals to trans- 
port to the galleys, the peasants must furnish the 
wagons and horses needed for the different stages. 
When the work was on a large scale, crowds of 
men were brought even from a distance with their 
cattle : escape was impossible ; the intendants 
taxed and imprisoned recalcitrants. They had, be- 
sides, no regard for weather, season, or the re- 
quirements of agriculture ; the peasant must obey 
the first order, and show no pity for his beasts, 
of which a large number would perish, and the 
peasant would return from his work, alone, in de- 
spair, and ruined, without either cattle or horse, and 
'with no hope of redress According to law, the 
State must, in some cases, feed him during the 
corvee ; but this was one of those ideal commands 
that intendants find too hard to execute. This 
was by no means all, but every thing cannot be 
told. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 163 

To give an .exact idea of the condition of the 
peasant, we will here briefly recall the taxes, 
claimed by the seigniors at the same time with 
all the others . There were the seigniorial taille, 
the rent, fines of alienation, percentage on mer- 
chandise sold in market, monopolies, and corvees. 

There were seigniorial dovecotes, warrens, and 
hunting-grounds. The seignior alone of all the 
village had a right to a dovecote, and he raised 
an immense number of pigeons. He alone had a 
right to a warren, and he raised an army of rab- 
bits. These pigeons and rabbits vied with each 
other in pillaging the country ; the former ate the 
grain, the latter the vegetables. The peasant could 
touch neither : whoever killed a rabbit was pun- 
ished with severest penalties ; under certain lords, 
he was straightway hung. Game was equally pro- 
tected ; . the seignior alone had a right to kill 
beasts of the afield, and showed himself almost as 
jealous of his hunting rights as of his titular pre- 
rogatives. 

When the lord hunted, dogs, horses, and men 
passed over the fields like a storm. Hedges and 
enclosures were broken ; for the peasant had no 
right to shut in his land, and thus restrict the 
hunting of his seignior ; even walls were frequently 
ordered to be leveled when the lord had a grand 



> 



164 A SHORT HISTOEY 

hunt. As for the respect, tact, and temper brought 
by the lord to the exercise of his sport, we may 
conjecture from the general character of the chase 
as we have shown it. 

After this, it is unnecessary to say that all 
Frenchmen, except a very insignificant number, 
were a prey to misery. 



XXX. 



Let us see the testimony of contemporaries as 
to the general condition during a period consid- 
ered glorious in our history — from 1650 to 1750. 
We cannot here quote all our witnesses, but must 
be satisfied with extracts taken at intervals of 
about ten year's. 

Extract from a letter written by the lady supe- 
rior of a convent of Blois : — 

" 1662. 

"There is nothing more certain than that, in 
Blaisois, Solonge, Vendomois, Perche, the Char- 
trian country, Maine, Touraine, Berry, part of 
Champagne, and other places, where there is a 
scarcity of wheat and money, there are more than 
thirty thousand wretches in the last extremity, most 
of them dying of hunger. These poor creatures 



OF THK FRENCH PEOPLE. 165 

have neither beds, clothing", linen, nor furniture ; 
they are, in fact, stripped of every thing. They 
are black as Moors, nearly all skeletons, and the 
children bloated. . . . Several women and children 
have been found dead in the roads and fields, with 
their mouths full of herbs. . . . M. Boullon vicar 
of the Holy Savior, at Bloi.s, attests that he has 
seen children eating refuse ; and, stranger still, he 
saw two in the cemetery, sucking the bones of 
dead bodies, which had been taken from a grave 
to make room for a corpse. The cure also writes, 
that he has heard the same thing JProm several of 
his chaplains, who had witnessed the unheard-of 
sight." 

Letter from the Duke of Lesdiguieres, to Col- 
bert : — 

" 1615. 
''Sir : I cannot delay telling you of the misery 
to which this province is reduced. Commerce has 
absolutely ceased ^ and, from all sides, people come 
to beg me to notify the king of the impossibility 
of their paying their dues. It is certain. Sir, and 
I speak on good authority, that the. greater pait 
of the inhabitants of the said province have lived 
through the winter upon nothing but bread made 
of acorns and roots ; and soon they will be re- 
duced to eating the grass of the field and the bark 
of trees. I feel myself obliged to tell you these 
things as they are, leaving it to you to present^ them 
in what form you choose to His Majesty. . . ." 



l66 A SHORT HISTORY 

Letter of the Abbe Grandet to the Bishop of 

Anvcrs : — 

"1683. 

"^ We went into houses which looked more like 
stables than human dwelling-places. 

" We found mothers holding children to dry 
breasts, and without a farthing to buy milk, . . . 
Some of the inhabitants are living upon bread 
made of ferns ; others have not eaten a morsel 
for three or four days.'' 

About the same time, the intendant of Boiirges 
wrote : " There is nowhere a nation more savage 
than these people. They are found sometimes in 
troops in the country, far from the road, seated 
around in a circle on a ploughed field ; but, if any 
one approaches, they instantly disperse " 

A famous writer, La Bruyere, paints the same 
picture in more glowing colors : " You see," he 
says, " certain fierce animals, male and female, 
scattered through the country ; they are black, 
livid, and burnt by the sun, and bound to the land 
which they watch with invincible obstinacy ; they 
have an articulate voice, and, when they rise upon 
their feet, they show a human face, and are, in 
fact, men and women. They withdraw at night 
into dens, where they feed upon black bread, wa- 
ter, and roots ; they spare other men the trouble 
of sowing, toiling, and harvesting for support, and 
thus deserve this btead which they have sown. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 167 

" I confess that seizures of land, attachments 
of furniture, prisons, and punishments are neces- 
sary ; but justice, law, and necessity aside, it is 
an ever new sight to me to* see with what feroc- 
ity men treat their fellow-men.*. . ." 

FeneTon wrote to the king: "Your people are 
dying of hunger. The cultivation of the soil is 
almost abandoned; city and country are depopu- 
lated ; all trades languish, and are unable to sup- 
port the workmen. Instead of money being 
wrenched from these poor creatures, alms and food 
should be given them. ' France is simply a large 
hospital, full of woe and empty of food. Popu- 
lar commotions, long unknown, are becoming fre- 
quent. . . . You are reduced to the deplorable state 
of leaving sedition unpunished, or causing the 
massacre of people, whom you have driven to de- 
spair, and who are dying every day of diseases 
induced by famine. Whilst they need bread, you 
want money, and do not choose to see the ex- 
tremity to which you are reduced.^' 

A. D. 1698. This is the situation of France as 
described by the intendants : — 

" In the district of Rouen, in Normandy, which 
has always been one of the most laborious and 
thriving provinces, among 700,000 souls, there are 
not 50,000 who have bread to eat when they 
choose, or who sleep on any thing but straw. 



l68 A SHORT HISTORY 

" In the district of Caen, the population is re- 
duced one half, by want. 

" District of Alen9on. One is saddened' to see 
half the houses falling to pieces, for want of re- 
pairs and props ; many of the owners have no 
shelter over their heads, and poverty is spreading 
everywhere a melancholy and fierceness which star- 
tle one. 

" The district of Rochelle has lost a third of its in- 
habitants from divers causes ; among others, want 
The peasmts have to deny themselves necessary 
food; and die before their time, because the slight- 
est illness easily destroys a body already con- 
sumed by inanition and suffering 

" The peasants of the district of Moulins are 
black, livid, and ghastly ; they live upon chestnuts 
and turnips, like their cattle. , . . 

*' In the district of Riom, the peasant drinks the 
oil of nuts ; it is • almost his only nourishment, 
which is astonishing in a country naturally so 
bountiful, but the burdens imposed upon the peo- 
ple do not allow them to enjoy the natural bless- 
ings of their fatherland. 

''In Dauphiny, general misery." 

And all France was* in the same condition as 
the provinces we have mentioned. 

. ItO*?. — A great man, Vauban, writes: — 

" The tenth part of the people are reduced to 
beggary, and beg effectively (2,000,000 beggars 
in a nation of 20,000,000) ; of the other nine- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 169 

teuths, five are in no position to give alms, being 
themselves reduced t(j the same unfortunate state : 
of the four remaining tenths, three are very poor." 

1725. — We read in a letter from Saint-Simon : — 

" The poor people of Normandy are eating grass, 
and the kingdom is turned into a vast hospital of 
dying and despairing men." 

1140. — Bishop Massillon writes to Minister 
Floury : — 

" Sire : The country people -are in frightful pov- 
erty, without bed or furniture ; the greater part, 
during half the year, eat bread made of barle}'- or 
oats for their only food, and are oblis^ed to snatch 
even that from themselves and their children to pay 
their taxes. 

" It grieves me, Sire, to have this sad sight be- 
fore my eyes every year upon my visits ; it is a 
certain fact that, in all the rest of France, there 
are no people poorer or more miserable than these. 
Without question, the negroes of our islands are 
infinitely happier ; for, in return for their labor, 
they are fed and clothed, themselves, their wives, 
and their children, whereas our pe.a^ants, who are 
the most industrious in the province, cannot, with 
even the most assiduous toil, provide bread for 
themselves and their families, and, at the same time, 
pay their subsidies. If any intendants of this prov- 
ince have told a different story, they have sacri- 
ficed truth and conscience for a miserable for- 
tune.'^ 



170 A SHORT HISTORY 

1*745. — The Duke of Orleans,- giving Louis XV 
a piece of bread made of fern, said, " Sire, this 
is what your subjects live upon." 



XXXI. 



We will now, as briefly as possible, describe 
the condition of the workmen and artisans in the 
cities. 

We have said a few words on the subject of 
communes : the reader will remember that this 
class freed itself from the tyrannical power of the 
lords by a communal revolution, and attained a 
more or less complete political liberty. The royal 
power, at the same time, began to increase. So 
long as that remained weak and down-trodden, com- 
munal liberty flourished. The workman lived under 
the rule of popular magistrates, in whose election 
he had shared ; he himself often became a magis- 
trate ; his intelligence, activity, and manners rap- 
idly improved in this state of politics, which un- 
fortunately soon ended. The moment royal power 
acquired a little force, it interfered in the affairs 
of the communes, appointed the magistrates, either 
directly or indirectly, and remodeled, after its own 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 171 

fashion and for its own profit; the city constitu- 
tions, which were called charters of the communes. 
Liberty was confiscated ; workmen and artisans, 
ceasing to be citizens, were thrust back into the 
limited spheres of their shops and trade. 

To understand the economy of the system under 
which they lived, we must return for a moment 
to the middle ages, showing what it was in the 
beginning, and what it became under the more 
and more sovereign influence of the royal power. 

In these days, whoever will, establishes himself 
as a tradesman. For the sake of clearness, let 
me give an example. Whoever wishes to be a 
locksmith, has simply to open a shop, buy some 
locks, iron bars, &c., ready made, or else have 
them made by his own apprentices. He sells his 
merchandise at any price he likes, and sells good 
or bad articles, according to his honesty or skill. 
It rests with the public to refuse to buy, if it 
finds his stock costly or defective ; the public 
must defend itself. The locksmith, on the other 
hand, cannot prevent another locksmith from open- 
ing a shop next door to him ; he must protect 
himself against competition by probity and good 
work We live, in this respect, under the rule of 
liberty, when each does what he chooses, at his 
own risk, and trusts to himself and his talents to 



172 A SHORT HISTORY 

earn a' living. As for the apprentices of the lock- 
smith, they make what contract they like with 
their master, binding themselves by the year, 
month, or even day ; they stay in one city, or go 
to another in search of work, all their acts being 
dependent simply on their own wills. What is 
the case with IdT^ksmiths, is equally the case with 
all trades. When we investigate the system of 
industry in the middle ages, we see that each 
trade formed a corporation For example, the 
locksmiths, in each city, instead of living and 
working alone in total independence of one an- 
other, lived and worked in a certain obligatory 
manner, decided by the regulations of the trade; 
The locksmiths would meet, and frame these regu- 
lations, then have them approved by the authori- 
ties of the place, — either king, seignior, or city 
magistrates. In return, the authorities would lend 
their weight to the corporation, to make its laws 
respected, though control was really exercised by 
officers, elected from the corporation for one year 
or two, by a free choice of all the members. 
These officers were generally called inspector 
(prudliommes) , and were two, four, or even eight 
in number. These regulations and the inspectors 
who superintended their observance bound all the 
locksmiths in a city together. We must now see 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 73 

why locksmiths, of their own accord, gave up all 
or part of their personal independence, and sub- 
mitted to a trades-union, and we must also see 
what was the spirit of this organization. 

The chief aim of the locksmith, in forming a 
corporation, was to restrain competition and es- 
tablish a monopoly. Consequently, their laws for- 
bade all strangers to sell,, within the city limits, 
locks, bars, wrought iron, in fact, any produce 
whatever peculiar to this trade ; the same prohi- 
bition held for all natives who were not master 
locksmiihs, the latter alone being allowed to sell 
this branch of goods. The number of these mas- 
ters was fixed by law, and, I believe, could not 
exceed twenty. To become a master locksmith, a 
man must wait for another master to .die, and 
leave a vacancy. There were still other condi- 
tions : a man must have been an apprentice for 
five years, and companion or journeyman five years 
more. 

Suppose a young man of fifteen wished to be- 
come a master locksmith : he must first apprentice 
himself to a master. The number of apprentices 
was also limited, generally to one for every shop ; 
so, if, in his own city, each shop was already sup- 
plied, the young man had to wait until one of 
these twenty apprentices attained the rank of 



174 -^ SHORT HISTORY 

journeyman, when he would make a contract, by 
which he agreed to work for his master five years, 
receiving no salary, but, on the contrary, paying 
a fee, which was settled by the rules of the society, 
and was about equal to a third or half of what a 
workman could earn in a year. The master 
pledged himself to lodge, feed, and clothe the ap- 
prentice. 

After the five years had elapsed, our young man 
would become a journeyman., being required to 
pay for this a small sum, which went into the 
treasury of the corporation. As a journeyman, he 
began to receive wages ; but he could work only 
under a master, and was allowed no private work. 
If he wished, at the end of his ten years, to be- 
come a master, and there was a vacant place, he 
must first pay a third sum, rather less than the 
first, and then be accepted by the assembly of 
master locksmiths ; his fate was in their hands, 
and he might be rejected as incompetent or 
worthless. This workman was, to each of his 
judges, a rival more or less formidable, accord- 
ing to his talent, and should he be very skil- 
ful, he stood in great danger of being rejected 
as incompetent ; many other chances also threat- 
ened him. A place might very possibly be va- 
cant ; but it was for the interest of the masters to. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 75 

keep it so indefinitely, and an excuse could easily 
be found; or there might be a son or nephew- 
just of age, who had but to ask, to gain the 
place, and the latter need serve neither as appren- 
tice nor as journeyman ; he had only to pay the 
usual fees, raised less than half as much again, 
and he was excused from that terrible specimen 
piece of workmanship which ordinary workmen 
had to bring to the masters for criticism before 
they could be accepted. Thus, every thing com- 
bined to restrict the trade to a few hands, and, as 
much as possible, to a few families, who trans- 
mitted it from father to son. 

The trade of locksmith is taken merely as an 
example ; the same system extended to all trades. 

When a merchant finds himself without rivals, 
he naturally profits by the fact to sell poor goods 
at a high rate ; such is human nature ; and it 
was a principle as well understood in the middle 
ages as now. So, to prevent the annoyances 
necessarily resulting from a monopoly granted to 
each corporation- in its specialty, the public, or 
rather the authorities, everywhere exercised over 
the corporations a rigorous police system. Con- 
sequently, under the pressure of this supervision, 
their laws gave minute directions concerning the 
manufacture of goods For example, the rules of 



176 A SHORT HISTORY 

the cloth-trade fixed, with strict detail, the way 
in which cloth should be woven, the length, 
breadth, number of threads, &c. Not a piece of- 
cloth was offered for sale until the inspectors had 
tested it to see whether it conformed to the di- 
rections of the statute. Tested and warranted, it 
was stamped. At first sight, one would fancy 
that this system had the advantage of doing away 
with all cheating in trade and of protecting the 
buyer ; but it was not so efficacious as would ap- 
pear. The history of corporations is full of suits, 
condemnations, confiscations, and fines inflicted 
upon fraudulent artisans. 

This system of supervision, which did not pre- 
vent fraud, did, on the contrary, put a stop to 
all innovation and progress. An inventor, who 
had done his work differently from his associates, 
was in danger of being treated as a cheat, — a 
good thing for the stupid or lazy merchant, who 
had no aspirations beyond enriching himself by 
following calmly the blunders of his ancestors. 
He was not threatened, as in our day, with the 
loss of custom by competitors who used their wits 
in a way that was profitable to the public. The 
regulations did not guarantee the buyer against 
fraud, but it did guarantee the jealousy of the 
merchant against the skill of an intelligent rival. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 77 

I said jealousy ; for this was certainly a ruling 
characteristic of the old industries, as is forcibly 
shown by the constant lawsuits of tho different 
guilds against one another. Those whose trades 
had any affinity were always at war, each attempt- 
ing to reserve to itself some mixed production, 
which, by its nature, belonged equal'y to both. 
So the tailors of Paris, who had an exclusive 
right to the manufacture of new clothes, have liti- 
gated for centuries against the secondhand deal- 
ers, who had an exclusive right to make over 
clothes. Shoemakers have fought scarcely less 
with cobblers ; bakers and pork-sellers, with inn- 
keepers, to prevent their selling bread and pork ; 
button-makers, with tailors, to prevent their mak- 
ing the buttons they needed ; and so with other 
corporations. . ' 

These were the marked features of the corpora- 
tions in their original state, before it was modified 
by the royal power. 

Freedom in money matters never truly exists in 
corporations ; but at least, whilst the communal 
life was energetic and the royal power feeble, the 
corporations obeyed only the laws imposed by 
themselves. The rules were made either by a 
general assembly of members of the guild or by 
chosen representatives. Furthermore, from the 

12 



178 A SHORT HISTORY 

members of the guild were drawn the officers ap- 
pointed to inspect the workrooms and shops. 
The royal power interfered with all that, not at 
one blow, but gradually. 

In the last centuries of the monarchy, trade- 
laws emanated wholly from the government, the 
corporations not having a single right on thia 
point. A minister like Colbert was doubtless more 
enlightened than the average artisan. The direc- 
tions issuing from his brain were certainly clearer, 
wiser, and more exact than they could have been 
from other sources, but they were also more com- 
plex ; his superiority of mind had this effect, that 
no detail escaped control, nothing was left free ; 
slight openings for invention and progress were 
perceived, and hermetically sealed. A minister, 
too, was more jealous, of his authority and more 
exacting of obedience, and had at his command 
laws, penalties, and many more agents than the 
corporations. The very force and perfection of 
the government machinery finished the subjection. 

But even the genius of Colbert could not fore- 
see all that the human mind, at odds with the 
system, and trying to evade it, often to satisfy 
the demands of the public, which was always call- 
ing for novelties, — all, I say, that the human 
mind was capable of inventing in the way of ruses 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I 79 

and expedients. Every time a new case appeared, 
another rule had .to bo added to the list, so that 
in time each ordinance became as large and lull 
of detail as a code. It was almost impossible for 
an artisan to keep all the rules fixed in his mind, 
and he was of necessity constantly violating some 
of them . 

When a law is so constituted that it cannot be 
wholly kept, the punishment of those who break 
it must be irregular and arbitrary, because all 
cannot be prosecuted ; the poor are the only suf- 
ferers ; the rich and powerful are spared. The 
public grows to scorn the law ; and even though 
mixed with the absurd points there may be desir- 
able and legitimate rules, all are regarded with 
equal aversion. So it was with the artisans. 
Deeds fatal to commercial honesty and lack of at- 
tention to insignificant details incurred the same 
punishment. The artisans, whenever they could, 
cheated ordinance and customer with no more re- 
morse for one than for the other. Foolish laws 
always pervert the public. 

The regulations of trade had still another ef- 
fect — they arrested nearly all progress for five 
centuries. There were five almost sterile centu- 
ries, in which could not be counted nearly as 
many inventions as in the first thirty years of the 
present one. 



l8o A SHORT HIST-ORY 

Slowly the royal power usurped the right of 
uaming the inspectors of trades. These function- 
aries were elective and temporary when depend- 
ent upon guilds ; the royal officers were appointed 
for life, but the apporntment was not a free gift. 
The inspectors bought their posts of the king, as 
did all the other officials of the ancient regime. 
It is of course understood that they were re-im- 
bursed by the fees required from the artisans at 
each visit, and also by their share of the goods 
confiscated as bad. , To inspect all the guilds 
in all the cities, a large number of officers was 
needed ; but the kings did not limit themselves 
to the actual requirments ; they invented a niul- 
titude of useless and even irregular offices, for the 
very evident reason, that the creation of these 
offices was a very easy way of filling the royal 
purse. It was an indirect tax, which cost nothing 
to collect ; for the post was not created until a 
fool (sot was the word used by a minister of those 
days) appeared to buy and pay for it ; and it was 
liis business to make his purchase good at the ex- 
pense of the artisans. This was one of the expe- 
dients most popular under the monarchy ; at the 
least call for money, offices were created, and 
sometimes sold for very considerable sums. True, 
they were often suppressed soon after, and the 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE.. l8l 

sot was left stranded witlioiit his money. When 
the need returned, the same office was renewed, 
and the {>ot was not always wise enough to refrain 
from buying it a second time. 

The king also employed this means for making 
presents to his courtiers. The Duchess of X, let 
us suppose, has married ; the king has signed the 
contract, and wishes to bestow a gift, and, if 
short of monej^, invents some office of inspector 
of wigs or measurer of logs, which he gives to 
the bride to sell for her own profit. 

Frequently, artisans, rather than submit to the 
tricks and exactions of these inspectors, would 
buy the offices themselves, and leave them vacant, 
knowing that the kings did not take the trouble to 
invent reasonable offices, which would have some 
practical value ; they fully understood that these 
duties would never really be executed. 

One would suppose that, the corporations hav- 
ing once bought the post, the thing would be done 
with forever ; by no means. Royalty never prided 
itself upon honesty towards the working classes. 
Under Louis XIY, n guild had to pay five or six 
times over for the abolishment of the same of- 
fices. 

The king also sold letters of mastership ; that is, 
the right to become master of a craft, without 



l82 A SHORT HISTORY 

submitting to the conditions imposed by the trade- 
laws ; but, if the former musters would give him 
a larger sum, he would withdraw this right. He 
also sold ihe privilege of admitting no new mas- 
ters during a certain period, or only the sons of 
existing masters, which made the trade more lu- 
crative, by restricting it to a smaller number. 

These facts suffice to show that the earnings of 
the working classes were always in the power of 
the king, and that he did not scorn to use this 
power. 

Corporations, besides special taxes made ex- 
, pressly for themselves, bore also the weight of 
the aidea and tallies like the rest of the people. 

Then, besides public charges, there were many 
large expenses within the guild. First, those con- 
stant lawsuits, which were ever on the increase ; 
then, whenever a master was admitted or had a 
son baptized, there were religious ceremonies, 
which they took pride in making more imposing 
than those of the neighboring guild. After the 
religious ceremonies, came the banquets of the 
corporations. All this exhausted their money, even 
with the fees paid by apprentices and journey- 
men. Every year the corporation had to borrow, 
and some of them were so sunk in debt that no 
one would join them. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 183 

In times of sufifering, so frequent under an ab- 
solute monarchy, the consumption of articles of 
prime necessity must be restricted, and that of 
other things almost stopped, so that there were 
periods of stagnation in every trade. For all these 
reasons, it was diiScult and unusual for an artisan 
to become rich ; but, on the other hand, the num- 
ber of workmen in each guild being limited, they 
could keep up the price of goods, so that they 
rarely sank to bitter want, and there were none 
of those extremes which we now see in trade. 
Good and bad workmen were in almost equal con- 
ditions, — very ordinary and very limited, but never 
altogether wretched, and always about the same. 
This class always had bread to eat, unless it rose 
to a fabulous price, as happened quite often. 
They had some furniture, and a Sunday coat which 
would last ten years, or even a lifetime, if prop- 
erly treated. 

When we speak of the working class of the 
middle ages, we must lay aside modern ideas. It 
might be said in the present, that workmen or ar- 
tisans formed nearly the whole population of the 
cities. Under the ancient regime, they formed, in 
the mass of the nation, a small, privileged class, 
a sort of aristocracy; and I speak not merely of 
the master, but of the journeyman too, for he had 



184 A SHORT HISTORY 

the privilege of working at a trade, which was 
not granted to every one. 

The riglit to choose a trade and work at it, a 
right which now seems so natural, was then 
thought contrary to order and justice. If a man 
lor any reason, was obliged to leave the condition 
of farmer, and abandon the country, or if the 
hardships of his position discouraged him and he 
turned to the city lor refuge, no trade was open 
to h^m but that of beggar, Bohemian, or robber. 
E^pccial stress should be laid on this point, which 
is not sufficiently noticed. Beggars and Bohemi- 
ans-formed a very numerous class in France; and 
this was due, not so much to the vice of indi- 
viduals, as to that of institutions. 

As, under the Roman government, the greed of 
nobles and rulers had, for centuries, cut off the 
mass of the people from landed property, and 
forced them to die of hunger and suffering, at 
tiie very side of immense tracts devoted to use- 
less pasture lands ; so the old regime forbade ac- 
cess to trades already existing, and to hundreds 
of others that might harve been started, to a crowd 
of men, who would have gladly given their toil, 
and who would thus have at once have escaped 
want themselves, and enriched the nation. These 
beggars and vagabonds bore in their brains, though 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 185 

unconsciously, the germs of those rich inventions, 
those endless forces a,nd resources which did not 
burst forth till this century, but which would have 
come sooner, if liberty had torn down the bar- 
riers which were raised against work. 



XXXII. 

Such was the condition of the people in HSQ, 
at the time of the Revolution. 

The work of the Revolution may be briefly told. 
The nation was divided into three classes, — nobles, 
priests, and people. The two former contributed 
scarce any thing towards the expenses of society, 
and enjoyed all its advantages. The clergy pos- 
sessed a third of the soil, and levied tithes upon 
the rest, which either belonged directly to the 
lords, or was burdened for their profit with various 
heavy claims. 

The Revolution first freed the land from these 
claims, and put noble and priest under the empire 
of equality, which is the same thing as justice. 
No more classes; all must pay the taxes, and all 
could aspire to office. 

All men equal in the sight of the law, was one 
of the grand features of the new society formed 
by the Revolution. 



l86 A SHORT HISTORY 

The people were, in no way/ protected against 
the excesses of government ; and the government 
was betrayed into excesses indeed. The Revolu- 
tion put bounds to the power of government and 
obtained pledges in favor of the people. This 
was the other grand feature of the Revolution, 
v/hich means liberty. Equality and liberty — the 
whole' Revolution is contained in those two words. 

The Revolution was not easy of accomplish- 
ment. Within and without, it met unbridled and 
furious resistance. Like a sea arrested by a dike, 
the Revolution broke down all opposition with 
pitiless fury. It was drawn into deplorable ex- 
cesses, but those excesses were not the Revolu- 
tion. They soon passed, but the principles and 
monuments of the Revolution have lived. 



XXXIII. 

Not yet is the work of the Revolution done, nor 
has the society, sprung from it, realized, in all re- 
spects, the ideal to which it aspired. 

As regards equality, the Revolution is three- 
quarters accomplished ; it still remains for equality 
in the sight of public opinion to be established 
beside equality in the sight of the law. 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 187 

Opinion still makes a distinction between the 
middle class and the work'ngmeu. This is due 
less to the fact that the latter work with their 
hands and are without fortune than to their want 
of education. When the time comes, — and per- 
haps it is near, — that laborers shall have elemen- 
tary teaching, the distance will be lessened. The 
time when these laborers shall have more than 
elementary teaching is much further away ; but, 
happily, this event is not necessary for the rest 
of the gulf to be bridged. It will be enough if a 
certain number of workmen shall be as well taught 
as the m'ddle classes. 

.The two classes, — for there are but two now, — 
avc also different in exterior, in their dress ; but 
this disparity is daily less noticeable. It is 
through the women that the classes lose their 
distinctive appearance. Woman is more impa- 
tient of inequality. She is often blamed for this 
trait ; preachers and moralists are always chiding 
her for it, and, in one sense, they are in the 
right When a women goes beyond her means, 
it clogs the whole household ; but, when she is 
in easy circumstances, her ambition is rather 
praiseworthy because of its results. 

It is certain that the tradespeople and laborers 
will never associate, as it would be desirable for 



l88 A SHORT HISTORY 

them to do, until the time when there shall be an 
end to this marked difference in dress. 

What will be the event in France is easily seen 
from the example of the United States, which are 
lUrther advanced than ourselves, and have this in- 
terest for us, that they show us where we are 
tending, and hold up to us our own image in the 
time to come 

In the United States, a workman wears through 
the day his working- clothes, blouse or overalls, as 
the case may be ; but, when his work is done, he 
dresses like every one else, that is, like a gen- 
tleman. In the streets, of an evening, the men all 
belong to one class. 

Light minds declaim against this confusion of 
ranks, this uniformity of costume, and regret the 
time when every class, and almost every trade had 
its outside physiognomy, its peculiar dress. Those 
people think themselves artists, and particularly 
wish to appear as such. At all events, they are 
poor, inferior artists. They do not see, that what 
the men of a lower class bear impatiently is not 
v/ealth, but the air of wealth, that combination of 
appearances which makes the rich man seem to 
belong to another and higher sphere. There lies 
the principle of that base passion, jealousy, with 
which the men of the people arc often justly re- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 189 

proached Equality is consolation for every thing, 
even for want of fortune. It is profitable for 
every one to see around hira only equals ; for 
the workman to feel himself the peer of the 
tradesman is a gain in morality and dignit}'' ; for 
the tradesman, it is a growth in the spirit of jus- 
tice, since, as we know, there is no justice ex- 
cept between equals 

The human mind and character will gain much 
from this uniformity, which has been so decried. 
There will be in every thing a change for the 
better, and for the more beautiful too. But the 
false artists, of whom we spoke, are not able to 
undei stand this aesthetic fact. The picturesque- 
ness of shoe and hat was good enough for them. 
But, they say, equality can never be perfect, the 
inequality of the moral and intellectual faculties 
must ever continue There is no doubt of that, 
and, still further, that inequality will become more 
mark-ed and natural superiority will show more 
clearly when the false and superficial inequality 
of rank and fortune shall be effaced. Far from 
fearing this result, we should wish it. Nothing 
is more useful and proper than that public appro- 
bation which is paid to qualities of mind and 
character ; and this inequality has none of the 
awkwardness of the other ; the human conscience 



190 A SHORT HISTORY 

revolts from claims of superiority or inferiority 
only when they are attached to the conditions^ 
into which the accident of birth has thrown us. 

As regards liberty, the work of the Revolution 
leaves us more to desire. 

Government is, if one may 'so express it, a ne- 
cessary evil. Reason and experience prove, that, 
without "government, without the organization of a 
collective force able to rule all other special 
forces, there is neither order nor security. With- 
out government, there is no equality. In this re- 
spect, the philosophy of our history and of that 
of many other nations can be formulated in a few 
words When there is no government or a feeble 
one, as was the case once in Gaul before the ad- 
vent of the Romans, and again in France at the 
beginning of the middle ages, there are formed 
superior classes, who rule and tyrannize over those 
classes which are called inferior ; and the ine- 
quaility tends ever to increase : when, on the con- 
trary, the government is strong, its first care is 
to put down the domineering classes ; inequality 
grows but slowly, the state tends to a level. 
Such was the case with us, first, under the Ro- 
man government, and, later, under our absolute 
monarchy. Between these two terms, equality 
and absolutism, there is an easily explained af- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I9I 

finity, which makes the latter follow in the train 
of the former ; but, both times, the government 
made ns pay dearly for the advantages it brought ; 
both times its result was to make barren the Roil, 
to kill the activity and vitality of the countjy, 
and to make of France one of those languid na- 
tions rarely seen outside of oriental lands. 

The sphere of government is to establish order 
and security ; but government does not always 
see the necessary limits of its domain, or wish to 
be bound by them, and, in this respect, the form 
is nothing, heads of republics having been as 
overbearing as the most absolute kings, Still, 
nothing can be more fatal, in the long run, than 
the government which goes beyond its province. 
It can be said, that, for three centnries, the gov- 
ernments of France caused each year more woes 
than any natural plague would ever have done. 

Unfortunately for the people, the Revolution did 
not know how to mark with exactness the point 
at which the legitimate action of government ends 
and the inflexible right of the individual begins. 
This work is bequeathed to us, and upon its ac- 
complishment depends the future of the working 
classes. The immense progress in their material 
condition within fifty years should not be con- 
sidered definitive ; it may, at any moment, be 



192 A SHORT HISTORY 

compromised, so long* as this problem remains 
unsolved. The working classes can themselves 
lend much help towards solving it, and that with- 
out requiring government to leave its proper 
sphere, and give them monetary privileges, as 
has been done too many times already, ' 

They must not expect from government what 
their own free activity, their own work and col- 
lective efforts alone can secure. — the gradual dim- 
inution of poverty, the gradual abolition of all 
those fatal servitudes which nature makes so 
heavy a burden for man. 

To reduce the government to the strict measure 
of its natural action is the task of the future ; it 
is already the object towards which history is 
pointing. The form of government matters much 
less than many believe ; what does matter is the 
limit of government. A republican assembly like 
the Convention has more in common with an abso- 
lute monarchy, whose immense disadvantages we 
have shown, than with a truly liberal regime. 

One reassuring fact is, that, by the force of 
events, no country is now condemned to a soli- 
tary destiny. On the contrary, the influence of 
nation upon nation will become more obvious 
daily, and the nations most advanced in the path 
of liberty will possess the greatest power of at- 



OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I93 

traction, this power being inherent in all true 
ideas ; so those nations will draw others into 
their broad movement. 

There will always be some nations to lead and 
others to follow; the destiny of the former will 
no doubt be the more glorious, but all will ad- 
vance. It is enough for the intelligent man, to 
whatever country he may belong, to put from 
him all dread, and look with tranquil gaze towards 
the future. 



E ND. 



13 



194 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 






PAGE. 


Agriculture, first principles of, 


13 


Aides, 


95, 151-2 


Alen^on, . . . 


168 


Al-ods, . . . . 


44, 47, 48 


Anjou, ...... 


. 153 


An vers, Bishop of, ... 


166 


Aquitaine, ...... 


39, 100 


Army, standing, .... 


. 119-22 


Artisans, condition of, in cities, . 


170-85 


Augustus, ..... 


. 21 


Austria, ...... 


144 


Auvergne, grand days of, 


. 134, 135 


Bagaudie, 


29 


Bailiffs, grand, .... 


; 106, 107 


Belgium, 


143 


Benefices, 


. 45-8, 53 


Berry, . . . - . 


153, 164 


Blaisois, . ...... 


. 164 


Blois, . . . . . . 


165 


Blois, Lady Superior of, 


. 104 


Bo is Guillcbcrt, . . . . . 


118 


Bouchards, Lords of Montmorency, 


. 99 


BouUon, ]\I., 


. 165 


Bourges, Indendant of, . 


. 166 


Brittany, ...... 


39 



INDEX 




195 

P.\C E. 


Burgundians, . 




. 9, 35, 43 


Burgundy, . . . . 


• 


89, 153 


Caen, .... 




. 16S 


Cgesar, Julius, 


, , 


21 


Capctian Kings, 




9Y, OS 


Carlovingian Kings,. . 


• . 


. 54, 6Q 


Castles strengthened, 




. 1Q 


Cens, .... 


• • 


95 


Censives, 




. 57 


Centurions, . 


. 


48 


Champagne, 




. 153, 164 


Charlemagne, 


. • 


44, 66 


Charles III, the Simple, 




. 76 


Charles V, of Germany, 


■ . • 


. 143 


Charles VII, . 


. 119, 120, 129 


Charles VIII, 


> • . 


. 143 


Clans, .... 




. 10 


Clermont, . . . . 


. . 


. 134 


Clovis, . 


. 36, 


38, 53, 65 


Colbert, 


> . 


165, 178 


Colonage, . * 


. 


. 56-60 


Coloni, . . . . 


n, 18, 25, 


26, 54, 55 


Communes, 


. 


83-8, 118 


Convention, the, . 


. 


. 192 


Corporations, . 


30, 


31, 172-85 


Corvees, 


. 92-3, 130-1, lGl-2 


Coucy, .... 


. 


. 99 


Counts, 


. 


48 


Court, the, 


, 


122-6 


Curia, .... 


• • 


. 28, 60 



196 



INDEX. 



Customs, ..... 


131-2, 152-5 


Daupliiny, ..... 


. 168 


Decurions, ..... 


48 


Denmark, ..... 


. 32 


Douanes, . . 


. 152-5 


Druids, ...... 


. 10 


Duels, judicial, .... 


71, 112 


Dukes, . . , . 


. 48 


Durance, ..... 


35 


Eleanor, of Aquitaine, 


. 100 


Estates, attached to offices, . 


52 


Fees, 


94, 95 


Fenelon, . ... 


. 167 


Feudalism, ..... 


. 53, 126 


Fiefs, 


57 


Fleury, . . . 


. 169 


For-mariage, .... 


91 


France, . . . . . . 


10, 32, 43 


France, Isle of, . 


99 


Francis I, . . . . 


122, 139, 143 


Frankisli Kings, power of, . 


37 


Franks, ...... 


9, 35, 36, 43 


French language, derivation of, 


. 8, 9 


Grabelle, ...... 


155-8 


Gallo-Romans, .... 


43 


Gascony, ..... 


. 39 


Gaul, ...... 


. 7-10 


Gauls, 


. 7 



INDEX. 



197 



PAGE. 



oc» 



Germans, ..... . 7, 33 

Germany, .... . 32, 34 

Grandet, Abbe, 166 

Greece, 32 

Guizot, ....... 12 

Dolland, .... . . 73 

ITonores, 48, 50 

Houses, first built in France, ... 8 

Huns, invasion of, ..... 35 

Immunities, ...... 48-50 

Italy, - . . 

Julius Csesar, ..... 

Jura, . . . . . . 

Justice, among German barbarians, 

in Gaul, ..... 

under Franks, 

feudal, . . . . , 

justiciary, .... 

under absolute kings. 

La Bruyere, ..... 

Land, distribution of, . 
Latifundia, ..... 
Law, personal, ..... 

study of Roman, . 

territorial, ..... 

Lesdiguieres, Duke of, . 

Limoges, ...... 

Lods and ventes, .... 



21, 32 


35 


40-2 


. 42, 4 3 


61, 66 


04, 68-71 


. 64 


134-38 


. 166 


. 44, 47 


23, 24 


42 


113, 114 


43 


. 165 


75 


. 95 



198 INDEX. 



PAGE. 



Louis I, the Debonair, .... 96 

Louis VI, the Fat, .... 98, 99, 100 
Louis VII. .... 93, 100, 102, 103, 143 
Louis IX, the Saint, . . 98, 110, 112, 127 
Louis X, the Quarrelsome, . . . .lit 
Louis XIV, 13, 122, 124, 12G, 132, 133, 139, 

143, 145, 181 
Louis XV, . . . . . 122, 144, HO 

Louis XVI, .161 

Lyons, . . . . . . . 35 

Mainbournie, ....... 55 

Maine, 153, 164 

Mallum, 48 

Massillon, Bishop, ..... 169 

Mastership, letters of, .... . 181 

Mazarin, ....... 142 

Merovingian Kings, .... 54, 65 

Merovseus, ....... 66 

Monopolies, . . . . . .93, 131 

Monthl^ry, 99 

Montmorency, Lords of, .... 99 

Morin, M., . IS 

Mortmain, . . ■ . . . . .91 

Moulin, .... . . . 168 

Normandy, . . . . .16, 153, 169 
Normandy, Duke of, ... . 101, 102 
Noimans, invasions of, . . . . 14-6 

Offices, public, under Frankish kings, . 48-53 
Offices, right to hereditary, ... 53 



INDEX. 



199 









PAGE. 


Ordeals, .... 


, ^ 


^ 


. 41 


Orleans, 


, , 


, 


99 


Orleans, Duke of, . 


• 


• 


. 170 


Palatinate, . . 


f • 




73 


Paris, . . . . 


, , 


, 


85, 75 


Pastoral life, 


, , 


, 


12 


Peace of God, 


, . 


. 


. 80 


Peers, trial by, . 


■ • • 


. 


61 


Perche, .... 


, 


. 


. 164 


Philip Augustus, 


98, 106, 


107, 


108, 119 


Pliilip IV, the Handsome, 


. 112, 


113, 


1:27, 128 


Philip V, the Long, 


. 


• 


117 


Picardy, .... 


. 


. 


. 153 


Poitou, 


. 


. 


. 100 


Property, division of, 


. 


. 


10-14 


Provinces, condition of. 


. 


. 


54 


Prussia, . . - . 


. 


. 


. 144 


Puiset, 


. 


• 


99 


Quarantaine, . 


. 


. 


. 109 


Quit-rents, . 


* • 


• 


95 


Revenues usurped, . 






. 51 


Revolution, work of, . 


^ ^ 


. 


. 185-6 


Richelieu, 






135, 142 


Riom, .... 


m • 


. 


. 108 


Rocheile, 






. 168 


Rollo, .... 


. 


. 


76 


Roman conquest, 






. 22 


Romans, 


, . 


. 


7, 8, 22 


Rouen, .... 






. 167 



200 



INDEX. 



Royal power, nature of, under feudal system, 100--2 
Royalty, absolute, ..... 138-46 
Russia, ....... 32 



Saint Simon, 


. 169 

• 


Saintonge, , , . . 


. 100 


Salt-smuggling, 


. . .156 


Salt-tax, 


155-8 


Saone, .... 


.35 


Security, . . . . 


11 


Seigniory, 


. 101 


Seneschals, grand, 


106, lot 


Serfs, .... 


, 59,60,89-95 


Serfs, freedom granted to, . 


. 116, in 


Slavery, causes of, 


. 16 


Soissons, 


35 


Solonge, .... 


. 164 


Sortos, . . . . 


44 


Spain, . . ' . 


. 32, 143, 144 


States General, 


128-9 


Suzerainty, 


. 101 


Sweden, 


. . . 32 


Taille, .... 


. 92, 126-30, 146--50 


Taxes, collection of, 


158-61 


Taxes under Romans, 


. 28 


Tolls, 


94, 154 


Toulouse, 


. 35, 87 


Touraine, 


ICO, 164 


Truce of God, 


. 80, 81 


Turgot, 


. 150 



INDEX. 201 



PAGE. 



United States, ...... 188 

Vassalage, ....... 63 

Vaubaii, 168 

Vendomois, , . . . . • .104 
Visigoths, 35, 43 

Warfare, private, . . . . 6t, H 

Wcrgheld, 42,43 

Wine-tax, . ..... 165-8 



V 



